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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901054">No Such Thing</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars'>windandthestars</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Newsroom (US TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Backstory Swap, Childhood Trauma, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:36:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>24,422</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901054</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I was meeting with Don Keefer. He had a couple of questions about a package he wants to run at ten.”</p><p>“Following up on my panel.” MacKenzie smiles to herself then raises her eyebrows. “What do you say we make him regret not asking you first?”</p><p>“I don’t think that’s how this is going to turn out.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” MacKenzie’s still smiling. “Think of it as an adventure.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Don Keefer/Sloan Sabbith, Will McAvoy/MacKenzie McHale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to the novel There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job (which I haven't read) and Sara Bareilles for the title and to Ashley for helping me to sort this one out.</p><p>This should be my last backstory swap fic, unless I get curious (again) and start considering whose storylines I could swap around.</p><p>This story follows the general contours of the show, so spoiler throughout, particularly for the later episodes. Warnings also for some minor explicit language, mention/discussion of child abuse, drinking and mention of alcoholism, sex (non-explicit), and death of a family member (off screen).</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>So if you tell me I can do the impossible, I'll probably laugh at you. I don't know if I can change the world yet, because I don't know that much about it -- and I don't know that much about reincarnation either, but if you make me laugh hard enough, sometimes I forget what century I'm in.<br/>
<em>Hiroshima - Sarah Kay</em><br/>
*</p>
</div><p>“Sloan?”</p><p>She doesn’t recognize the voice so she pauses to consider who it might be before turning to see.</p><p>“I’m MacKenzie McHale.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Do you have a minute?”</p><p>“I,” Sloan glances back toward the door she’d been heading toward. She didn’t spend much up here with the primetime staff. She had a desk on twenty two from when she’d started in marketing. She liked that desk in the corner of a mostly empty block of cubicles, the one she’d been given before someone had realized she’d be of more use elsewhere. She’d prefer to head back there. “Sure.”</p><p>“Do you mind if we head to my office; it’s a bit loud out here.”</p><p>It wasn’t, but it was chaotic, buzzing. She’s noticed most of the spaces around the studios were like that, a little unnerving despite the fact she knows it’s all an organized mess. She’d been up here before, but not this late, less than an hour before the first primetime show went live, and even then she’d asked Neal if they could find a quieter place to work. </p><p>They’d ended up spending most of their time in one of the conference rooms around the corner from the elevators, but she still knows where his desk is, where MacKenzie’s office is. She’d seen the name on the plaque by the door as she’d passed by on the way to meet with Don earlier. </p><p>Familiar with the space or not, she’s slow to follow MacKenzie back to her glass encased office. It’s a small space compared to the other offices on this floor, she knows that, but it’s huge compared to the offices she’s used to working in, the space intimidating enough that she lingers by the door until MacKenzie gestures toward a chair.</p><p>“I saw the spots you did with Trilogy.”</p><p>Trilogy, that had been years ago, back when she’d first started with AWM, not long after she’d given up the commercial ad work she’d done to help pay her way through grad school. It hadn’t been her project, just something she’d been asked to help with because of her experience, experience that was cheaper to come by paying her her promised salary instead of hiring someone else. She hadn’t been offered the job on merit, she’d know that. She’s not sure MacKenzie does.</p><p>“Those weren’t my spots. One of my professors from the Goldman— Berkeley. Mika wanted,” Sloan cuts herself off. “That was a long time ago.”</p><p>“More recently, you’ve been working with Neal on the models.”</p><p>“For the election, yes.” That was part of what she did, a small part of what she did, but MacKenzie didn’t seem to be interested in hearing that.</p><p>“I haven’t paid as much attention to Neal’s updates as I should have, but I understand you’ve compiled an extensive history of House races.”</p><p>“If twelve years, six election cycles, is extensive.”</p><p>“Four hundred and thirty five districts.” MacKenzie emphasizes seemingly for her own benefit. “You’re familiar with most of the current races?”</p><p>“I know which races we need more data for.”</p><p>“Data being?”</p><p>“Polls.” Sloan has to stop herself from sighing. She was used to having to explain her work to other people, particularly people she thought should have a decent understanding of what she did, but not like this, not when MacKenzie was clearly digging for something.</p><p>“For the more contentious races?”</p><p>“It’s usually the opposite.”</p><p>“So you could speak to the state of the contested races.”</p><p>“I could speak to the state of the polls. Is there something you need to know? I could put you in touch with—” Sloan’s pleased for a moment thinking she’s discovered what it is MacKenzie wants, it wasn’t always easy to ask favors from people you were used to ordering around, but then she realizes MacKenzie has completely ignored her offer and continued talking.</p><p>“...the segment you did with Brenda.”</p><p>“What about it?”</p><p>“Zane says you’re a natural in front of the camera.”</p><p>“That wasn’t,” Sloan can feel her stomach sinking. “That was a favor. I had the questions ahead of time. There were two of them. I didn’t have to read a script or worry about millions of people watching. I don’t know what kind of emergency led you to me, but you need to find somebody else to fix your problem.”</p><p>“It’ll be a panel, a roundtable discussion. Eight or nine minutes. Will will be the one asking the questions. You’ll mostly have to sit and look like you’re listening. I can get you a list of the questions. You can talk through them with Will if you want.”</p><p>“There’s no way—”</p><p>“You can take notes with you. I can give a copy to a staffer. They can be in your ear the entire time.”</p><p>“The show starts in forty minutes. There’s no way—”</p><p>“Wardrobe has a blazer you can borrow. Hair and makeup is available. Will’s looking forward to meeting you.”</p><p>“You told him I,” Sloan doesn’t know how to finish that sentence.</p><p>“I was hoping to find you earlier. You’re quite difficult to track down.”</p><p>“I was meeting with Don Keefer. He had a couple of questions about a package he wants to run at ten.”</p><p>“Following up on my panel.” MacKenzie smiles to herself then raises her eyebrows. “What do you say we make him regret not asking you first?”</p><p>“I don’t think that’s how this is going to turn out.”</p><p>“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” MacKenzie’s still smiling. “Think of it as an adventure.”</p><p>“That’s not really my—”</p><p>“It’ll be great. You’ll see.”</p><p>*</p><p>She does it. She doesn't know how she does, it's all such a blur, but when she walks out of the studio MacKenzie's standing with her head poking out of the control room grinning. Standing beside her Neal holds out a fist and Sloan awkwardly shuffles her papers so she can return his fist bump with a tight smile. She’s relieved, but not enough to be able to start to process anything else she’s feeling.</p><p>“That was amazing.”</p><p>“I should have,” Sloan frowns to herself for a moment before shaking her head. She could figure that part out later. Right now she wanted to get out of the building before she got talked into something else.</p><p>“I have a feeling Will’s going to want to talk to you about doing other panels. We’re both quite impressed.”</p><p>“I don’t think.” Sloan tugs at the bottom of her borrowed blazer. “I have work I have to do.”</p><p>“I’m sure we can work something out.”</p><p>“She means at Columbia.” Neal steps in to help her out with, surprising her, as he usually did, with his casualness.</p><p>“I teach a couple of classes. Night classes.”</p><p>MacKenzie nods, frowning a little, but doesn’t seem particularly put off by the possible scheduling conflict. “I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”</p><p>***</p><p>Neal’s been telling her for days that MacKenzie wanted to talk to her about her schedule, and while Sloan didn’t doubt that was true she’d figured that as long as she stayed tucked away on twenty two there wasn’t much MacKenzie could do other than pester Neal. It turned out she’d been wrong.</p><p>“MacKenzie.” Sloan looks up, surprised by the shadow hovering on the corner of her desk.</p><p>“Neal said he thought you might be coming in early to get work done. He said he knows you’re smart but there’s no way you type at super human speed.”</p><p>“No.” Sloan moves her keyboard farther back onto her desk. “Did you need help with something?”</p><p>“I thought you might have a bit of free time. You really saved me, us, the other night. I wanted to say thank you.”</p><p>“OK.”</p><p>“I thought maybe we could do a little shopping.”</p><p>“That’s not really—”</p><p>“On me.”</p><p>“I—”</p><p>“It’ll be fun.”</p><p>“You said that the other night.” Sloan reminds her, trying not to frown. She doesn’t want to be rude, she just preferred to be left alone.</p><p>“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”</p><p>She sighs and considers not answering but MacKenzie looks like she really wants to know, like she might genuinely be upset if it wasn’t. “I’m not interested in doing another panel.”</p><p>“I’m not trying to butter you up. I promise. I really do just want to say thank you.”</p><p>“I drink coffee.”</p><p>“Coffee is for remembering to follow up on an email when I’m out of the office. We were five minutes past the point where we should have scrapped the panel. I promise I won’t keep you long.”</p><p>*</p><p>She doesn’t know what it is about MacKenzie that makes her agree, but she does, still somewhat reluctant, still unsure it’s a good idea, but she’s done this before, window shopping, albeit only ever with a group to egg her on.</p><p>She knows all the name brands, all the price points. She’d picked them up pretty quickly when she’d first moved to California for grad school, desperate not to stick out from her older more professional peers, but knowing that, knowing what she’s looking at doesn’t make it any less awkward standing in a store where she knows the cheapest options cost well over a hundred dollars.</p><p>It’s a nice store, full of professional clothes, full of stuff she would actually wear, but she’s cautious about looking too interested even if she is a little curious.</p><p>“You should try something on.” MacKenzie plucks a blouse off a rack and holds it out toward her considering. “Neal says you’re pretty monochrome.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Sloan wonders fleetingly when and why he’d noticed that. Neal with his cardigan collection, didn’t seem particularly concerned with current fashion trends. “Black is good, or white, although it is after Labor Day.”</p><p>“Is that still a rule?” MacKenzie looks amused by the idea.</p><p>“It depends.” It’s the safe answer, Sloan knows that and she’s a little irritated at herself for it. She didn’t know much about MacKenzie other than what she’s heard, mostly from Neal, but she knows enough to know MacKenzie wasn’t going to lay off about whatever it was that she wanted unless she knew Sloan was being honest, and Sloan had a pretty strong suspicion that that was only going to happen if MacKenzie trusted her. Giving half answers wasn’t going to help in that department.</p><p>“Working for a media company I try to be conservative in my assumptions.”</p><p>“That sounds like something Will would say.” MacKenzie’s clearly enjoying herself now, smiling with a quick shake of her head.</p><p>“He’s an economist.” </p><p>Sloan means it as an explanation, an affirmation, but MacKenzie takes it as some sort of slight, a teasing barb, because she laughs at that, brightly, grinning.</p><p>“Do marketers have a long standing feud with economists?”</p><p>“I’m not a—” Sloan stumbles over the denial unsure of where to start. “I wasn’t trying to—”</p><p>“I’m teasing.” MacKenzie’s smile relaxes, turns gentle. “Will’s conservative. It’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but it comes in handy. Neither of us will fault you for pointing it out.”</p><p>“I meant I find it helpful not to antagonize people unintentionally.”</p><p>MacKenzie nods at that, turning to flick through another rack. </p><p>It’s a little unnerving, all the smiling, but MacKenzie keeps it up, pulling free a couple of dresses and several blouses.</p><p>*</p><p>“You’re not paying. I am. Pick something out or I will.”</p><p>Sloan doesn’t doubt that, but she’s still paralyzed, still waffling, overwhelmed by the options. MacKenzie liked the navy blouse, she’d seen the approving look she’d tried to hide, obviously wanting Sloan to make up her own mind, and it was a nice blouse even if Sloan wasn’t sure she would ever wear it, not to the office anyway.</p><p>Although she could, she should, the realization comes with a welcome wash of relief. She wasn’t comfortable with MacKenzie buying the blouse, with the price tag or with whatever strings it might come with, but wearing the blouse, showing gratitude, showing her appreciation of MacKenzie’s judgement, Sloan knew that would play well, might help her wiggle out of whatever demands MacKenzie might be thinking of making.</p><p>“I like the navy blouse.” Sloan says with a carefully practiced smile. “If you’re sure.”</p><p>*</p><p>MacKenzie had been sure the same way Sloan had been that wearing the blouse to the office would be a good decision and she’d been right. She hadn’t even made it halfway to Neal’s desk before MacKenzie had appeared.</p><p>“It’s perfect.” MacKenzie tugs a bit straightening the sleeve Sloan had been toying with earlier and Sloan smiles softly, rolling her eyes when Neal pulls a face obviously put out by the delay the fuss was causing.</p><p>“Twenty-two and pick em.”</p><p>Sloan knows it’s Will coming up behind her before he speaks but she waits until he’s closer to glance over her shoulder at him. She doesn’t say anything, his joke had obviously been aimed at someone else, but he does meet her eye and shake his head when she turns. “Mac mentioned she took you shopping. Is that the final outcome?”</p><p>“Yes.” It sounds a little direct, she knows that, but he doesn’t mind, if anything the mischievous sparkle in his eye only grows. She’d seen that look before, even on the air there was a bit of it there, a willingness, a desire to tease Mac just a little, despite the fact she knew he couldn’t be like that with everyone. She’d certainly heard of him being serious more often than not, but he’s clearly enjoying himself now.</p><p>“It’s a shame you couldn’t have talked her into a bookstore, or into a table for lunch, I heard Le Bernardin was taking reservations.”</p><p>Sloan almost groans at the thought of the lost opportunity, but her curiosity holds her in check, because she knows she hasn’t mentioned that to Neal. It wasn’t high end clothes that interested her, not the way they did for so many women, but food. Any food really, but food she hadn’t had, dishes she hasn’t tried. There were still so many of them even in her price range, but the more expensive stuff, the rare stuff intrigued her in a way she couldn’t explain.</p><p>“It’s a nice blouse.”</p><p>Will shrugs at that. “It’s no pear sorbet with marinated blueberries and frozen sweet corn meringue.”</p><p>“That’s not fair.” The words slip out before she can think to stop them.</p><p>“I’m an evil man.” He agrees, enjoying himself. “You’re pretty calculating yourself. Although I have to warn you, humoring her isn’t going to get her to leave you alone about the show. She’s not good at taking no for an answer.”</p><p>“I took her shopping. Why does everyone—” MacKenzie stops to glare at Will when he starts laughing. “You’re an ass.”</p><p>“That’s probably true, but I’m not wrong. She saved somebody’s ass,” He says pointedly in a way that suggests he knows MacKenzie knows something he doesn’t, “and I appreciate that, but if she wants to spend her career coding robot brains and color coding post-its that’s not your call.”</p><p>“She’s perfect.”</p><p>“Uh huh.”</p><p>“And the shirt has nothing to do with that.”</p><p>Will grins brightly in a way that makes it impossible not to smile, so Sloan does a little, almost shyly, feeling the warmth of it bubble up in her chest.</p><p>“She’s stubborn and I’m incorrigible, feel free to ignore us both. Unless you want a free lunch.” He finishes voice dropping conspiratorially as he turns to her. “My number’s in the office directory.”</p><p>***</p><p>Normally she would’ve said no, she had said no, but Neal had been insistent, and the fact that she’d been at the office working on a Saturday, when she didn’t need to be had made it hard to argue that she had better things to do. She would’ve said no, but she’d said yes and ended up here with Neal and Don and a bunch of the primetime staff, the eight of them crammed around a table for six in a pizza place in a neighborhood Sloan doesn’t recognize.</p><p>Don, she thinks, is the one celebrating something, but that hasn’t been explained to her. Neal’s bought her a drink, the beer getting warm on the table in front of her, while she nibbles at a slice of pizza and tries not to stare at the soda Don’s sipping from.</p><p>She could get up and get a water, that was a thing people did, but she didn’t want to draw attention to the fact she wasn’t drinking. Eventually that led to someone saying something and she didn’t want to have to try and explain, squished in here with a bunch of people she doesn’t really know.</p><p>She recognizes most of them, Neal had introduced her to them at some point, and there had been a quick round of hellos when they’d walked in, but she’s mostly keeping to herself, laughing at the obvious jokes and filling in whatever stories Neal can’t 	quite get right.</p><p>She’s enjoying herself, having more fun than she had at the office, as uncomfortable and vaguely bored as she’d been after staring at a screen for two days straight. She knows she should have planned better, found something else to do, found somewhere else to stay. She’d realized that some time after midnight the night before, but by then it’d been too late. She’d assumed an alternate plan would become obvious in the same way it was obvious that other than her roommates she didn’t know anyone particularly well. That suited her well enough most of the time, but it was posing a problem now that her building was being fumigated and her roommates had scattered across the city for the weekend.</p><p>She could’ve gotten a hotel room, the thought occurs to her midway through a joke Don’s telling. She could have, but she hated the idea of paying that much for a place to stay, of sacrificing what little savings she has, because while she’d managed through undergrad, grad school is still an expense she’s dealing with.</p><p>“It’s fifteen bucks.” Neal says incredulously and she can’t tell if it’s the price or the person he’s talking to that he finds unbelievable. She’s curious, wanting to know, but she never finds out because she’s suddenly covered in beer, dripping with it, the bottle that had been sitting on the table in front of her, drenching the front of her shirt, pooling in her lap, the table around her suddenly silent after a particularly explosive, “fuck,” comes from somewhere on her left.</p><p>There’s an apology, she knows there must be one. Someone hands her a wad of napkins, but that seems far away, unnecessary, because all she can smell is the beer, that almost sour, yeasty smell. It’s stuck in her nose, inside her head, it’s all she can think about.</p><p>Normally it wasn’t a problem, a couple of whiffs, a too easy smile, someone bumbling, fumbling. She could deal with that, deal with it outside of herself, but this was too close, too unexpected.</p><p>Moving feels impossible, but she’s following Don to the door, outside, because that seems to be the easiest thing although she isn’t sure why at first. The air helps, standing on the sidewalk, carefully crossing the street, his offer comes back to her in pieces; his place was around the corner, she could shower if she wanted.</p><p>She does, badly, so badly that it’s not until she’s standing under the spray that she realizes this might not be a good idea. Other people went home with guys, guys the didn’t know, and she knew Don, knew him well enough not to lock the bathroom door. That could be a mistake, she knows that better than anyone, but Don was a good guy, he certainly wasn’t a bad one anyway, she was sure of that. There were other concerns, fainter echos inside her head, but it’d been long enough, she’s been away for long enough now that they were only whispers: her mother’s dark hissing warning her about boys, her father’s drunken shouting dulled from a roar to a stuttering recording.</p><p>She grabs the first bottle of shampoo she sees and squirts a dollop into her palm, lets the smell of it, foreign yet familiar, envelop her. </p><p>*</p><p>Don had given her some clothes, a t-shirt, boxers, a pair of sweatpants, and a plastic bag which she’d shoved her clothes into and thrown out into the hall before getting in the shower, so she’s expected it to be there, the bag of clothes, at her feet, or against the wall where Don might have moved it so he could get down the hall, but there’s only Don sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him.</p><p>“Your shoes are fine.” He says glancing up at her. “The soles are a little sticky but other than that they look all right.”</p><p>“Where are my clothes?”</p><p>“Oh.” It’s a mental smack to the side of the head. He smiles at her a little sheepishly. “I was going to throw them in the wash, they’re a mess, but I realized I didn’t know if they were dry clean only or if you had stuff in the pockets.”</p><p>“What pockets?”</p><p>He chuckles at that thinking it’s a rhetorical question, and maybe it was, but she’s too busy trying to sort through the part about him washing her clothes to mean it that way.</p><p>“That’s a waste of,” she isn’t sure what: water, electric, effort. She hadn’t really thought about getting back to the office, about what she was going to wear. She had a skirt and a t-shirt there, but she’s across town and wearing what she assumes are Don’s pajamas.</p><p>“I thought we could watch a movie or something. I can throw some of my stuff in too if you don’t mind.”</p><p>“No, that’s fine.” She says agreeing to something. “That’ll be fine.”</p><p>*</p><p>They end up watching an old movie, something Don likes. He swears it has a happy ending so she sits patiently through the first half until she finds herself caught up toward the end. It’s not something she’d ask to watch again but she’s enjoyed it enough that she doesn’t mind the fact it’s taken up over an hour, time which she would’ve had to fill with idle chatter and she’s never been too good at that.</p><p>“I know it’s a little niche.” Don apologizes as the credits roll and she shakes her head dismissing the idea.</p><p>“It was nice. One of my roommates likes films like that. I think.” She tacks on realizing she can’t be sure. The walls in their apartment were thin, but not that thin. Even so, old and black and white fit the bill so she wasn’t too concerned. “I’ll ask her when things calm down.”</p><p>“Man trouble?” Don sounds amused by the idea so it takes her a moment to realize what he means.</p><p>“Oh no, she— our landlord’s fumigating the building.”</p><p>“That’s a nuisance.”</p><p>“Usually I’m out of town.” She smiles a little thinking about it. It’s not the best excuse to spend a weekend out of town volunteering but that had never mattered. “But with the model. I wasn’t sure how things were going to be. If I had known it was going to be totally dead I’d be building a house upstate somewhere.”</p><p>“This weekend.” He repeats and she wonders why she'd had to say that, why she hadn’t thought not to mention that part because she knows before he offers what he’s about to say.</p><p>“If you need a place. I know a couch isn’t that enticing but you’re welcome to stay here.”</p><p>I have a place, she almost lies, but it’s not a lie she can sustain and she’s not foolish enough to try. If Don said something to Neal, if Neal had noticed the hours she’d been working, and he probably had, it wouldn’t take him long to put two and two together. She wasn’t planning on moving in, but she had spent the previous night at the office and she didn’t want to have to try and explain that.</p><p>“I don’t want to be—”</p><p>“No, no.” Don shakes his head. “I don’t mind. You’re already dressed for bed. I’ll grab you a pillow and some sheets. There’s a spare toothbrush, brand new, under the sink. It’s yours if you want it.”</p><p>*</p><p>“Is she still bugging you about the show?”</p><p>Sitting across from Don, working her way through a second bowl of cereal it takes her a minute to place the woman he’s talking about. “Mac?”</p><p>“She gets a little over excited sometimes. I could ask her to lay off.”</p><p>“She’s all right.”</p><p>Sloan means it in the most general sense but it satisfies Don who still seems a little groggy working through his first cup of coffee.</p><p>“You’re an incredibly good houseguest you know that?”</p><p>I have roommates she almost reminds him, but she’s not sure that would mean anything. She’d gotten up and made coffee. She’d gotten up and very quietly made coffee. He’d been in and out of the shower before he’d realized that she’d gotten up and refolded the sheets and blanket that he’d lent her, longer still before he’d realized she was standing in the door to the kitchen watching him with a mug of coffee pressed between her hands.</p><p>“I stole your coffee.”</p><p>“You had one cup.” He stifles a yawn and then smiles. “Payment for all your hard work.”</p><p>“I scooped grounds and poured water into a machine.”</p><p>“Hard work.” He insists and she almost laughs when he yawns again.</p><p>***</p><p>She’s nervous, almost anxious, but Don had promised her that none of this had to go anywhere. It could just be for practice if she wanted. He was curious, curious enough that she was too, which was why she had agreed, why she’d poured over the questions he’d sent her, writing out answers again and again until the words aligned themselves smoothly in her head.</p><p>All she had to do was talk, talk to Neal who was currently standing behind the camera making faces at nothing, goofing off while Don fiddled with the final settings.</p><p>“Sloan could probably do that faster.” Neal points out to no one in particular and Don makes a noise she can’t quite place. She assumes it normally sounds more annoyed but he’s in a good mood this afternoon.</p><p>They’d had to move some of the furniture to clear out a space, a corner of the room they could set up with a couple of lights. She'd had to sit under them for awhile and fiddle with her makeup to get it just right. Don had offered to find someone from hair and makeup, but she had helped shoot enough ads back in grad school that she'd been able to manage.</p><p>It was only one question after all, one possibly two, explained a couple of different ways, at different levels, once to Neal and then again, broken down and simplified, to Don who she knew had no real understanding of the intricacies of the model. He knew how it worked in the grand scheme of things, an understanding that was more than sufficient considering what most people knew, but that was the point wasn’t it, Don had wanted to do something about that and he’d asked her to help.</p><p>He wasn’t asking her to talk about something she knew nothing about, he was asking her to explain something she knew everything about and she appreciated that even if it terrified her at the same time.</p><p>*</p><p>It’s easy enough the first day, a little awkward, and she fumbles a bit, but when Don shows her the final edit she’s impressed, pleased with herself, because she looks good and sounds even better, it’s just a couple of minutes, but it’s her, on TV, in a major news broadcast.</p><p>That weighs on her over the next couple of days, but Don’s patient with her, putting up with her questions, and requests for another take, while Neal keeps her smiling, teasing her just enough to keep her distracted.</p><p>It gets easier after that, so that by the end of the week she’s beginning to forget what it was that had made her so nervous. She’s popular, Neal tells her as she’s packing up for the night, catching glimpses of Will at the far end of the bullpen as she grabs a couple of things from Neal’s desk. There were questions coming in for her now, specifically for her. Someone higher up was thrilled with the increased web traffic, but she wasn’t interested in that, she wanted more of the questions. She’s curious about them so Neal promises to send them to her, he’ll cc her when he emails Don, they can both take a look at the questions, maybe tweak the format of the segment if she’s interested.</p><p>She is interested, but Don’s a little more hesitant. It’s not her, it’s a timing thing. He explains it all to her briefly: he needs the flexibility, he could have someone edit the segment on the fly, but some of her answers were complex, he didn’t want to make a mess of things but he has some ideas. Could they try it during the broadcast, just once, she wouldn’t have to be in the main studio. She’d have the question and the answer, she could come up with a couple of different versions. He’d be able to let her know how long she’d have half way through the show. They’d still have time for a couple of takes if she wanted them. It’d reduce the risk of a major error, but they could come up with something else if she wasn’t comfortable. He wasn’t trying to push her. He’d rather have some sort of segment, even if only some of the time, than none at all.</p><p>*</p><p>It grows from there.</p><p>She pre-films a couple of spots for Will’s show. Don walks her through most of it, Mac hovering in the corner, Neal back at his desk no longer needed to keep her nerves in check.</p><p>It’s mid August now, the weather outside stifling but it’s cool inside despite the lights glaring overhead. She hasn’t quite gotten used to them, but she finds she’s not noticing them as much, not when Will’s around.</p><p>She’s always known he has a sense of humor, but she hadn’t realized how much of a dork he could be. He’s mostly like that when Mac’s around. It makes her laugh and Sloan can see the appeal in that, it’s a bright delighted sound Sloan finds contagious.</p><p>She’s gone out to lunch a couple of times now with Mac, quick trips around the corner to the deli, once farther uptown to a hole in the wall Mac said reminded her of her dad’s favorite London pub. She’s been out a couple of times with Will too, cautious but unwilling to pass up the opportunity to see the new baseball exhibit at the city museum, or to take Mac’s seat at a Yankees game.</p><p>He reminds her a bit of her brother, of the siblings she doesn’t talk to and she finds, to her surprise, she likes that about him. Will’s famous in his own right. Rich and popular with the city’s elite in a way that should make her incredibly self-conscious, but it doesn’t. He’s a northeastern prick in schooling and upbringing but he doesn’t act like it.</p><p>He shows up to the baseball game in a t-shirt and the same worn baseball cap she’d grabbed on her way out the door. He shows up to lunch with a folder full of menus and a wad of twenties for a cab; they laugh themselves silly and eat until he’s convinced she’s finally found her favorite takeout spot. He invites her over for dinner and she accepts but when Mac asks she hesitates, finds herself coming up short for words, for excuses.</p><p>She likes Mac, but she finds the idea of the two of them as friends intimidating. It doesn’t fit with her experiences, her expectations. She should be more uptight around Will but it’s Mac that occasionally leaves her feeling unsettled. Will reminds her of a cousin, a brother, the guys she spent time with in school, the ones who spent their days in suits complaining about the lack of good jobs in politics with a casual sweatshirt-inclusive dress code. They were the guys who worked hard and partied harder, who never invited her for a night out but were happy to spend the day pouring over law books and government reports with her. They liked sports and music and girlfriends with perfect makeup and impeccable taste.</p><p>She appreciated that about them, appreciated that she and those girls lived in two separate worlds. Grad school had muddied the waters a bit and then Mac, like with most things, had thrown the dichotomy out the window and Sloan had yet to figure out what to do with that, which is why she’s standing in Mac’s office fumbling for a better reason than the one she’s already come up with.</p><p>“Maybe next weekend?” She offers knowing Mac has a thing then. She can’t remember what Will had said the thing was, but that wasn’t important right now.</p><p>“It’s only running this weekend.”</p><p>“Oh, um.”</p><p>“If you don’t want—”</p><p>“I can make it work.”</p><p>“You sure?”</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah.” She nods.</p><p>*</p><p>“Mac invite you?”</p><p>She wants to wiggle ‘did she’ into the middle of his question to tease him but she’s already slumped into a chair across from him and she can’t be bothered to make the effort.</p><p>“I told her I’d go.”</p><p>“You sound thrilled.” Will smiles amused.</p><p>“I’m tired.”</p><p>“You know she thinks you’re scared of her.”</p><p>“I am.”</p><p>She doesn’t know why she says it, but she knows if she’s going to say it to someone Will isn’t a bad choice. He’ll tease her about it, but it won’t get back to Mac, not as having come from her mouth anyway.</p><p>“She’s loud because she likes you.”</p><p>“It’s not the volume control that’s the issue.” Sloan glances over at him with a sigh. “She exists in a world I don’t understand.”</p><p>“She’s pretty good at explaining things when you ask.”</p><p>“When was the last time you asked?”</p><p>“Not in so many words.” Will pauses for effect, pretends to consider. “About five seconds after I told her to fuck off.”</p><p>She laughs at that, an honest warm sound. She’d known Will was like that, like her, although they’d never talked about it, about how not knowing something, about how looking stupid, foolish was a risk, was a gamble, one that for her had often paid off poorly. </p><p>She was curious, much more innately than Will was, but there were limits to that, careful ways to ask without asking, without sticking out, but there was only so much she could ask before she had to start admitting she didn’t know.</p><p>“It’s not even,” she stops herself there, unsure how or if she was allowed to broach that particular subject, “I don’t really—”</p><p>Don’t what, she wasn’t sure. She’d learned to trust people with the little things, to let that build into bigger things, to let the familiar be a comfort instead of a fear, but Mac felt like something else entirely and she finds that unsettling.</p><p>“Mac spends half her weekend stealing my clothes and yelling at sports teams she knows nothing about because I’m too busy watching the game to entertain her. She’ll be happy just to have someone else around. Bring your laptop and have a work party after you’ve been bored to death by whatever exhibit it is Mac thinks she’s supposed to find fascinating.”</p><p>*</p><p>“Mac said it’d be all right if I—”</p><p>“You ran into Lotti?”</p><p>“Who?” Sloan wanders through the apartment following the sound of his voice, surprised by how empty it feels with just him here.</p><p>“Lotti. Short, brunette.”</p><p>“Lori?” </p><p>“That’s the one.” Will glances up from the table with a grin. “That’s probably for the best.”</p><p>“Why’s that?”</p><p>“I told her I’d have this done.”</p><p>“And it’s not going well.” She infers, carefully sweeping a cluster of balled up papers from the table in front of her and taking a seat.</p><p>“She didn’t ask for a sea of paper.”</p><p>“Writer’s block?”</p><p>“No,” Will rubs a hand over his face. “Something isn’t clicking. Tell me about India.”</p><p>“What about India?”</p><p>He reaches over and draws a clump of scattered papers into the space she’d cleared. “I’m not looking for a comprehensive history.”</p><p>“Should I start with Partition?” She smiles at his surprise and waits to see what he’ll make of it.</p><p>“I was expecting something a little more,” he fishes for a word and then gives up with a huffed laugh.</p><p>“Distribution of fortified rice, vaccination programs, literacy camps. A historical foundation helps with policy, so does science, and an understanding of social—”</p><p>“Would you read what I have?” He asks, the exasperation just for show.</p><p>She does, carefully combing through it a second time before picking up the pen he’d abandoned. She’s careful, reworking sentences in her head a couple of times before writing them down. It’s not her usual wheelhouse, but he has most of the statistics laid out, and he has staff that will catch any missteps on her part, it’s not the writing itself that’s giving her pause, it’s making it sound like him, the way he tended sound to when he wrote his own copy.</p><p>“What is it you keep considering?” He asks her several paragraphs in and she stops with an easy shrug.</p><p>“The translation from Sloan to Will.”</p><p>“Write out the Sloan version. I can help with the translation.”</p><p>*</p><p>He stares at the three versions, Sloan, Will, and Professor Sabbith, the last part mainly in bullet points, the notes she’d make during a lecture, the highlights hastily scrawled on a whiteboard. That’s what seems to be holding his attention, the final few points she’d been making before he’d grown impatient and tugged the notepad back in his direction so he could see what she’d been working her way through.</p><p>“You make it look so simple. That connection.” He points to the second to last bullet point and she nods like she knows she’s supposed to. It’d seemed like an obvious connection to her, but he’d evidently been struggling to make it, the relief he’s found in having solved the mystery has settled his shoulders and put a look of delight on his face. It’s subtle but it’s there and she appreciates that she’s been able to give that to him. She certainly hadn’t expected to, leaving Mac at the coffee shop around the corner to wander up here with her keys.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’d done a few spots on Will’s show, mostly pretaped, but she had done one live segment last week, a couple of questions she’d already answered, a rapid fire summary of the model, what it meant, what it would look like on election day.</p>
<p>That had been Thursday. Friday Mac hadn’t said anything to her about another segment so she’d gone into the weekend wondering more about her next project than about the model or anything else. Neal had suggested she talk to Charlie, mentioned that he might be able to find her something so she could keep splitting her time between AWM and ACN, keep juggling that with her work at Columbia. </p>
<p>She’s not sure that’s something she wants to do, but she’s considering it, thinking about it on Monday when Don brings up Tuesday’s election coverage. She doesn’t immediately assume it has anything to do with her. They talk about his show sometimes. He likes to have her opinion, likes to rile her up and get her ranting about policy. He says it’s nice to hear someone talk about something that isn’t partisan politics. She thinks he just likes to hear her talk. She doesn’t mind.</p>
<p>They talk about the show for that night and the set up of the coverage for tomorrow: the changes they’re making to the studio, the segments he and Mac are planning. He asks her if she minds pre-taping some stuff. She doesn’t; she figures it might be her last shot, at least for a while, so she doesn’t mind, still doesn’t mind when Don mentions he’d appreciate her sticking around later than normal. He knows she has to teach on Wednesday mornings, but she laughs and makes a joke about coffee and he looks relieved.</p>
<p>She’d known there would be questions, had thought she might have to do some follow up later in the week, but she hadn’t expected the pained look on Mac’s face every time she had to stop herself from asking her to jump into an empty seat in the studio.</p>
<p>She appreciates that Don had been clear with the usual stipulations, but she can see how frustrating it is for Mac, the inadequacies in the segments she’d pretaped. There’s enough there for them to use but it’s not specific in the way that it could be. Even so, she’s not interested in volunteering, even if she feels a little guilty about that, like maybe she should, but it’s a big deal, a big night and that’s way too much pressure for her.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>“You going to answer that?”</p>
<p>She wasn’t planning on it. She figured she’d have to do something about the ringing though, eventually, when she found the energy to reach over and switch her phone off. She should probably do that anyway. She wasn’t sure if this was the sort of thing other people cared about, people other than Reese and Charlie. They weren’t real photos, but that didn’t matter, they had her name attached, she was on TV sometimes. She wasn’t famous but maybe someone thought she was close enough, maybe close enough to call and ask for a comment, ask for something worse. She didn’t really want to find out. She should turn her phone off.</p>
<p>“It’s not good news.” She tells him, but when that doesn’t dissuade him she sighs. “Somebody died.”</p>
<p>“Somebody,” he seems to be trying to sort out what she’s saying. “Somebody what?”</p>
<p>“They only call when somebody dies.” They, her family, somebody also her family. People who hadn’t bothered with her much since she’d left home. Somebody was calling her and it probably wasn’t Ann, Ann who out of all of them she could almost stand. She was almost famous now, close enough that they all had her number. They’d gotten it from Ann, they’d all wanted something, but that had only been texts, there was only one reason they would be calling.</p>
<p>“Do you want to find out who?”</p>
<p>“Who what?” She leans her head back against his bookcase and closes her eyes.</p>
<p>“Who died? Who’s calling. I don’t know.”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t matter. Either way.” She says knowing she’s not helping his confusion. “You can ask them to stop if you think it’ll help.”</p>
<p>“Will it?”</p>
<p>“It’s gone to voicemail four times already.”</p>
<p>The ringing stops, the phone goes silent, the screen goes dark and then flashes back on, illuminating her leg and the tissue balled in her fist beside it. She watches Don stare at it for a moment and then gesture. She hands it to him.</p>
<p>“Sloan’s phone.”</p>
<p>“She’s not here right now. Can I take a message?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know. Working. She left her phone on her desk and it’s been ringing so I picked it up.”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“No.”</p>
<p>She watches the corners of Don’s mouth twist before he sighs.</p>
<p>“I can let her know.”</p>
<p>“I can’t promise that.”</p>
<p>“All right. Thank you.”</p>
<p>“And no goodbye then.” Don frowns at the phone before handing it back to her. “Karlie says you should call her. She doesn’t know what to do with her life now. She’s so upset. She wants to know if you’ve heard from Tom, Dick, and Harry. And really she’s serious, call her; she’s distressed.”</p>
<p>“She means Joe.” Sloan can’t help but correct. She hardly knew anything about the woman, but she still rubbed her the wrong way. “He’s been six feet under for the last ten years. At least he’ll have some company now.”</p>
<p>Joe had been an ex-boyfriend, something the two of them had somehow had in common, although in Sloan’s case she’d been twelve and she wasn’t entirely sure that that counted. Karlie had been older, older than both she and Joe, old enough to be dating her dad now, or to have been dating her dad. She fits the mental correction in around the other stuff rattling around in her head.</p>
<p>The last couple of hours have been hell, this was far from the worst of it, although she’s not in the mood to explain that, not even to Don, who she thinks maybe, might understand.</p>
<p>“Can you take that with you, answer all my calls?” She’s only half joking, trying to lighten the mood before he starts worrying about her. She does want his help, wants him here right now, but she doesn’t want any more than that, not when she needs him for so much more, this job and his easy friendship.</p>
<p>“I have a show— you’re supposed to, do you want me to pull you?”</p>
<p>“Reese asked me to take a couple of days.”</p>
<p>“The photos?”</p>
<p>She shrugs at that and he exhales, angry, but in control. “That’s bullshit.”</p>
<p>“I understand.”</p>
<p>“I don’t. It’s not fair to you and it certainly isn’t—”</p>
<p>She laughs at that, a hoarse chuckle. “Nothing that’s ever happened to me has been fair. It wouldn’t be so bad if I’d done something to deserve it.”</p>
<p>“What could you possibly—”</p>
<p>She talks over him, musing, while he insists that Reese interfering was totally uncalled for. “I’ve never done anything reckless. I should have.” She insists mournfully. “At least then,”</p>
<p>“Then what?” </p>
<p>She’d be the victim everyone had always told her that she was, although the thought of feeling like that, of blaming herself leaves her with a crippling sense of fear. The four of them, she and her siblings, clamouring, playing keep away, she had been the only one to step to the front of the line before someone could shove her there, before she was thrust there unprepared. She’d bore the brunt of the beatings that way, but she’d been the last one to be spat at, to be called names. Her mother had mistaken fear for bravery and had spared her the worst of her cruelty but it’s her father that sits hanging over her tonight.</p>
<p>“I tried so hard to do everything right: don’t stick out, don’t talk too loud, don’t argue. It never worked out.”</p>
<p>“If it’s all going to get fucked up anyway.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” She agrees and he shakes his head.</p>
<p>“Give it a couple of weeks. Let things settle down then if you want, I’ll help you out with that.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>She makes it to Saturday before she feels like she’s going to crawl out of her skin. It’s the voice in her head, the sneering one, the one that sounded like no one and exactly like her father. </p>
<p>She’d known this was coming. She’d felt similarly disorientated after her mother had died, suddenly free, yet trapped inside her own head, lost in the onslaught of memories she’d thought she’d left behind. She’d known it was coming but she’s having a hard time adjusting, a hard time letting herself sit alone in the dark long enough to sleep.</p>
<p>The dark had always been filled with her father’s looming shadow, the sound of him coming home after last call, stomping loud in the front hall, yelling for whoever might still be awake, shouting more when no one came, picking names at random. She’d dreaded falling asleep, knowing she’d wake to that, now she dreaded spending the night twisted in dreams, in memories suddenly so vivid her skin seems to burn with them.</p>
<p>That’s why she texts Don. It’s dark and getting late, and she’s exhausted, desperate for sleep, restful sleep, but she knows it won’t happen, not in her own bed, not tonight, but maybe— it seems like a ridiculous idea, but she’s desperate enough to try, a change of scenery, someone who knows some of what had happened, who might not ask questions when she insists on sleeping with the lights on.</p>
<p><em>Sounds good.</em> He replies like she’d suggested dinner, or a movie, a stop by the corner store, like she’d suggested something else and not just invited herself over to spend the night on his couch. <em>Popcorn? Or you looking to crash?</em></p>
<p><em>Bed.</em> She hits send before she realizes a little context would be good or at least a proper sentence even if she knows by now he’ll hardly mind.</p>
<p>
  <em>Door’s open.</em>
</p>
<p>She remembers to bring her own pajamas and a toothbrush, but she hadn’t given any thought to blankets, pillows. She hadn’t thought of much other than being there, but he had because the couch is already made up, sheet tucked in, blanket folded back, pillows resting against the armrest.</p>
<p>“There’s cereal and whatever else you can find if you’re up early.” He offers. “Is there anything else—?”</p>
<p>She almost doesn’t say anything, but it’s the way he sits on the offer, the way she knows he really means it that makes her ask.</p>
<p>“Could you,” she swallows, reconsidering for a second, but then asking, “I know it’s a little, could you put your hand on my arm.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” He says like he means ‘of course’ like people asked him that all the time.</p>
<p>“Just.”</p>
<p>He lays his hand against her arm and she reaches to slide it higher. </p>
<p>“More,” she pauses trying to find a word that doesn’t sound violent, that doesn’t sound like the thing burned into her memory, the feeling of fingers bruising and hard.</p>
<p>She needs to know if it’d really been like that, if it would really be like that, if it was different now. She needs to know but she’s afraid to ask, more afraid of scaring him then scaring herself, although there’s a part of her that’s terrified, as terrified of being haunted as she is of the haunting.</p>
<p>“Tighter,” she says although his hand is only laying there, although he isn’t holding her, because the word works, explains in a way she can’t.</p>
<p>She can feel his fingers, individual fingertips but there isn’t any pain let alone any sort of terror, any worry, just the pressure and the unconcerned look on his face.</p>
<p>Gentle she thinks despite the way he’s done what she’s asked, his grip tight enough to be uncomfortable. He wasn’t trying to hurt her, she wasn’t sure he would even if she asked.</p>
<p>I’m a jerk, he’d told her once in warning and she wonders again what made him think that, who might have suggested that because she’d been there done that, dated those guys, and lived with one, and Don, Don wasn’t anything like that.</p>
<p>“I think maybe,” she says because he’s still standing there waiting for instructions. “Thank you.”</p>
<p>“Did that help?” He smiles a little, the soft dorky look she’d learned to associate most with Mac’s senior producer.</p>
<p>“I think so.” She isn’t sure, and she knows there’s no way she sounds like she is, but that seems less important to him than the glimmer of a smile she offers him in return.</p>
<p>“If you need anything else don’t feel bad about waking me up. You could throw a bucket of water on me and I’d be back to sleep in less than five minutes.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>She isn’t expecting to sleep, not like she does, not for as hard or as long as she does. It’s almost noon by the time she’s vaguely aware of the sound of running water, the muted whosh of a refrigerator door opening and shutting, the light overhead replaced by the glare from the window.</p>
<p>“Brunch?” He offers when she sits up blinking at him, fumbling for her glasses, her other hand attempting to smooth out what she knows must be some epic bedhead.</p>
<p>“There’s cold pizza if that sounds better.”</p>
<p>“Food.” That registers first and he grins at her.</p>
<p>“Lots of it.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“I know you didn’t mean it.” She says not entirely sure what she’s letting him off the hook for, only knowing what she wants, knowing she shouldn’t, she really shouldn’t ask him, but she’d been serious when she’d mentioned it the first time, when she’d said she’d wanted, for once, to deserve the shit that got thrown her way. She wanted to be a little reckless and she didn’t trust herself, or anyone else, enough to ask them.</p>
<p>“What’s that?” He asks brushing the last of the powdered sugar from his mouth, the late night box of pastries they’d picked up already devoured.</p>
<p>“You said you’d help me be reckless.”</p>
<p>“I did. What did you have in mind?”</p>
<p>“I want to sleep with a coworker.” She says it as casually as she can, as if she hasn’t been thinking about it for weeks.</p>
<p>“You want me to ask Neal—”</p>
<p>She almost laughs at that but she can see why he would think that, why Neal would make a good choice. Neal didn’t date so much as hook up. That was how he preferred it and she didn’t mind, not really but, “no not,” she shakes her head trying to find a way to ask, to explain, “he’s almost half my age. Isn’t that illegal? I—” she pauses, “I meant you, if— only if you want. If you don’t it doesn’t have to be awkward, I just thought you’re not seeing anyone and I can’t ask Will and I don’t exactly make friends so—”</p>
<p>She glances over at him not quite sure if she’d rather he laugh, thinking it’s a joke, or take her up on the offer, because it is, it’s an offer, she’d put it out there, and now she’s wondering if she should have, if he’s going to feel like he’s taking advantage of her or worse that he’s obligated, like he has to keep being the good guy when he’d rather just tell her no, tell her thanks, but that’s a little too reckless for me, because it isn’t just his help she’s asking for she knows that.</p>
<p>"Me?" He doesn't immediately say no and she's relieved by that, by the way he seems to be taking her seriously. "Is that reckless or," he smiles, in a way she finds bewildering.</p>
<p>"I don't know what you mean." She says cautiously, finding the admission achingly uncomfortable. That wasn't something she admitted to, let alone said, not when they were standing so close to the edge of— she doesn't stop to consider what that might be.</p>
<p>"I'm the safe reasonable guy. God knows why you think that," he smiles again. "I'm glad you feel like you can trust me."</p>
<p>"But?" She asks worried again, second guessing, wishing she could take it all back.</p>
<p>"I don't want you to be disappointed. I'm not a knight let alone one with shining armor."</p>
<p>"No," she shakes her head because she'd never thought he was, but she did trust him, more than she trusted anyone else, even though sometimes that scared her, how willingly she trusted his judgement even when everything in her was yelling at her to run in the opposite direction because that still happened a lot, the crippling doubt, even if it didn't happen as much as it used to.</p>
<p>"I don't want—” she frowns and tries again. "I don't think that."</p>
<p>He's amused, she hasn't missed that, but she's missed why, the reason he's reached over to take her hand when everyone else would've moved back and given her space. She's feeling edgy now like maybe she should leave before she does something she's going to regret, before she somehow sends them both unravelling because that's what tended to happen when she stopped listening to that nagging voice in her head.</p>
<p>She never pushed anyone away; no one ever got close enough for her to push them away. No one ever got close because she'd never let them until MacKenzie had come along. Mac was like that, Sloan knew that now, it was hardly her fault that Don had been there, that he had been the one to help fix things, but she did have a way of shaking things up and Sloan wonders now how Mac never seems to notice, because this feeling—</p>
<p>For a second it feels like everything stops because Don’s hand is on the side of her face and he’s looking a little concerned, not worried exactly, but like he’s wondering what’s going on inside her head, like he’s hoping that it’s better than what he’s thinking.</p>
<p>“You went quiet.” He says softly, his hand still there, skin against skin, and she smiles, trying to reassure him because she knows she does that sometimes, gets too caught up inside her head to pay enough attention to everything else.</p>
<p>Usually it’s because she’s working, or panicking, or somehow managing to do both at the same time, but this was something else. She likes the way it feels, his skin on hers. It’s not a new sensation, but it feels different than it had with other guys, maybe because she’s the one asking this time, maybe because he seems content to sit like this forever.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>It isn’t mindblowing sex. She doesn’t have that kind of sex. She’s not entirely sure that kind of sex even exists, but it is good sex, better than most, and Don seems pleased enough, eyes half closed, sprawled out on the bed, naked and unself-concious as she watches him breath, faster and then more slowly as he smiles and then yawns as time passes.</p>
<p>“That didn’t feel reckless.” He turns his head to look at her and she smiles, still sitting half wrapped up in his sheets: a bare shoulder, a leg sticking out.</p>
<p>“I don’t know what reckless feels like.” She reminds him flatly, still not sure if that’s true, even if she knows what fear feels like, even if that’s an overly familiar feeling.</p>
<p>“Reckless feels great until it feels like shit. This just feels great.” He smiles lazily and turns to stare back up at the ceiling. “You’re welcome to the other half of the bed, or the couch.” He seems to find the latter amusing. “If you want. Don’t feel obligated. I think I’m going to sleep for a week now.”</p>
<p>“You have work in the morning.” She doesn’t know why she reminds him. It’s not as if he’d forget that, but it makes him laugh, really laugh so she giggles a little, watches him turn his head to grin at her arm stretching into the space between them, inviting.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>She hadn’t thought much about it, if reckless was once, or more than once, or something else entirely, but he’s right it didn’t feel wrong, not the first time, or the second, so she stops thinking about it, stops feeling like she has to ask his permission every time she wants to come over.</p>
<p>She still asks, there’s not much point in her being there if he’s not, but she’s not afraid of what he might say, of what he might think. She’s stopped waiting for him to scare her and maybe that’s the reckless thing, but she’s not thinking about that either because it feels nice to have someone there beside her even if it’s not all the time, even if it’s just some of the time.</p>
<p>He’s there when she asks him to be and, apparently, now, before she can, because he’s just waltzed in with a smile and a nod and taken the remaining seat across from Charlie’s desk, the seat she thinks she’s supposed to be sitting in, even if she doubts she could have made it that far before she’d realized something was wrong, because there was something wrong. She hadn’t seen it at first, she’d been apprehensive, she didn’t know Charlie well enough to be getting called up to his office and she certainly didn’t work for him, but Reese had been there, Reese who she’d worked with, worked for quite a bit, Reese who she got along with well enough, and so she’d relaxed a little until she took a mental step back and realized what this looked like, what this would look like to anyone but her, because there wasn’t a reason for Reese to be here. Charlie worked for him, sure, but not in a way that would affect her. Reese shouldn’t be here. Reese being here was a very bad sign. She’d been trying to figure out of what exactly when Don had walked in and she’s thankful for that, for the distraction, because she doesn’t like the list she’d been compiling.</p>
<p>“Sorry it took me so long.” Don’s apology isn’t sincere, she can see that but she doesn’t know why, can’t figure out why even as he keeps smiling. “Apparently no one mentioned to Will all of you were up here either.”</p>
<p>That sounded like a warning, a friendly sort of warning, the sort of thing she’s more used to hearing from Will when he’s feeling protective of Mac, even when he didn’t need to be and she wonders if that’s it, if that’s why Don’s here, because Will hadn’t known. Hadn’t known what, she doesn’t have enough information to figure that out yet, or was Don the protective one; that seemed less likely. There was another option there, somewhere. She’s sorting through what she knows, trying to figure that out, find the other option, when she realizes she’s missed, missing part of the conversation.</p>
<p>“Not happening.” The assertion from Don is firm, but with that same friendly tone, careful but definitive.</p>
<p>“I think—” Charlie starts but Don cuts in. Whatever she’s missed there’s something there to explain this, the way Charlie doesn’t push back against being interrupted because she knows that’s not something he tolerates much of, not even from Mac, not even when she can’t seem to help herself.</p>
<p>“She’s not a dancing monkey. She’ll be bored out of her mind. Sloan.” He says her name directly, careful with the vowels but with enough firmness to get her attention the first time, because she’s paying attention now, paying attention to him, the only person she knows for a fact has a grasp on what’s going on in the room. “The Peterson Institute just put out a report.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.” She says because he knows she knows that. She’d been the one to mention it to him.</p>
<p>“Did you read it?”</p>
<p>“Part of it.” She says because that’s true, she had read part of it. She read parts of a lot of different things. She didn’t always need the specifics, she hadn’t needed them in this case. She wasn’t particularly interested in global trade or currency manipulation, but there were ways it related to other things, more interesting things and so she’d read enough of the report to pick up the bigger details.</p>
<p>“Explain it to me.”</p>
<p>She frowns at the request, not understanding why he’s asking. She’d watched him read the report himself Saturday afternoon, she’d watched him leaf through her highlighted copy. He’d made it farther than she had.</p>
<p>“Like I don’t know anything about international monetary whatever.” He waves a hand around and she recognizes what this is, the game he liked to play sometimes, because for whatever reason he enjoyed watching her pretend he was an idiot, tearing things apart and reassembling them from the tiniest building blocks.</p>
<p>She starts with the trade deficit, because she’d need the context later for explaining other things, for explaining why anyone even cared about currency manipulation, why anyone would care about the bulk of the report, but she’s careful because there’s so much to be said about the trade deficit, about how or why to fix it, about so many other tangential things, so she sticks to the most basic of responses, breaking it down again and again until he looks satisfied with the simplicity of it all and she builds from there.</p>
<p>It’s not exactly what she’s used to, but it's a lot of what teaching is, a lot of what building the model was, a lot of what marketing had been. The basic concepts, the foundation, what she needed was different, but once she had that, the rest of it wasn’t hard even if she wasn’t used to talking to people like they were high school econ students.</p>
<p>“The WTO is the last step.” She clarifies when he seems to think that might be the easiest option. “We would need the cooperation of several other affected countries before we could even—”</p>
<p>She stops when he smiles and narrows her eyes a bit because he’s clearly enjoying this more than he normally did. </p>
<p>She’s expecting him to crack a joke about saying ‘countervailing currency intervention’ so many times in one breath, even though she’d made a point of hardly saying it at all, because even with the abbreviation, CCI, that wasn’t the level of discourse they’d been having.</p>
<p>She’s expecting a joke but she gets another request instead, one that confuses her enough to keep a cloying startled feeling from creeping up on her because she doesn’t like where this is headed.</p>
<p>“NACRHHS.”</p>
<p>“The National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services what about it?” She strings the words together in one quick breath wondering what it is he could possibly want to know, because she knows he knows she doesn’t know much, doesn’t know as much as she should about domestic policy when it came to health and human services, when it came to rural poverty, the sorts of things she's had too much personal experience with to have much interest in.</p>
<p>“I’m going to give you some of their findings on rural Head Start programs and the Child Care Development Fund and you’re going to explain it back to me like I’ve suddenly developed total amnesia.” He pauses then asks, “so what do you know?”</p>
<p>“About your sudden inexplicable amnesia?” She shoots back, a little annoyed that he still hasn’t explained what any of this is about, but then he chuckles, shakes his head at her and she relents. “I know what Head Start is and that the CCDF exists.”</p>
<p>He gives her some facts, mostly numbers, but he’s skimpy on the details so she starts with what she knows, slotting in the numbers as she goes, pleased that he seems to have more information than he’d let on, less pleased when he won’t let her tug his notepad from his hands and flip through it to find the list of facts he’s working from.</p>
<p>“I’ll give them to you.” He promises meaning the facts not the papers, but she doesn’t argue, because he’s been doing a good job of it, feeding her the information she needs far enough ahead of time that the transitions between ideas make sense but not so far ahead that the details get muddied, because he’s still sticking to the big ideas, the ones with complexities and complications that she has to sort through and explain.</p>
<p>She pauses for a moment, inhaling to give herself an extra second, another pause to try and find a way around having to cover transportation in any sort of detail. She’s mentioned it, briefly, because she knows it has to fit in there somewhere, it always does, but she doesn’t have enough of an understanding and Don isn’t providing her with one. He also isn’t paying attention anymore. She notices that, notices the smile he’s not quite bothering to hide.</p>
<p>“What?” She says but the smile’s clearly meant for Charlie.</p>
<p>“That was fun.” Don insists, and he is insisting, not announcing or suggesting. “Teleprompters are boring.”</p>
<p>She feels herself swallow, registers the feeling along with the recognition that she normally wouldn’t notice, that she’s noticed because she’s trying to keep herself grounded, focus on the feeling of the floor solid and steady under her feet, because she knows what this must be about, what she’s missed, why he’s here and it terrifies her.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“Four o’clock?” She makes the words come out, echoing Neal who’s the one who’s finally explaining because she’d asked him to, after Don had extracted her from Charlie’s office, after she’d forced a smile on her face and thanked him, after she’d managed not to panic long enough to get downstairs, down to the bathroom no one ever used after hours, the one around the corner from her desk.</p>
<p>It hadn’t taken her as long as she’d expected to calm down. She didn’t know enough of the specifics to really start worrying. She didn’t have them so she’d asked Neal, because she needed to know even if she didn’t want to, in case Don wasn’t there next time or if someone asked. She needed to know what to say, what not to say.</p>
<p>“You’d be wasted.” Neal says with a shrug, easily dismissing the idea. “If you want a segment, talk to Mac, at least that might be interesting.”</p>
<p>Interesting for who he doesn’t say but she assumes he shares Don’s opinion about four o’clock being boring, about her being bored like that was even a possibility, like she could even think about that when she knew she never wanted to set foot in a studio again if this was what Charlie had in mind, if this is what he saw as her continued contribution to ACN.</p>
<p>She’d miss seeing Neal all the time if it came to that, but there was always some sort of political hubbub, always something that needed a model or some sort of analysis. She’d still have her job with AWM. It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t as interesting, as varied, as the work she’d done for ACN, but she’d get used to that again. She’d offered to stay because Will had suggested she might, because Don had suggested she should and she’d liked the work, but not that, not every day, not live, not with people she didn’t know, and certainly not with topics she didn’t know anything about.</p>
<p>“Oh,” she says and then smiles covering the misstep because ‘OK’ would have been better or ‘thank you’ or even ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’</p>
<p>“I’ll let you get back to work.” She slides off of the corner of his desk she’d sunk onto when they’d first started talking and offers him another smile. “I should head out.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>She’s almost out the door, almost gone when she runs into Mac.</p>
<p>She’s expecting a quick ‘hello’, a quick ‘have a good night’, but Mac stops her with a relieved “hey” like she’d forgotten and just remembered she’d been looking for her.</p>
<p>“Can you do five minutes tonight? I know it’s short notice and we can work around it, but since you’re still here.”</p>
<p>She pauses waiting for an answer and Sloan winces at herself, mentally recoiling, trying almost instantly to find a way to take it back when she sees Mac register the look.</p>
<p>“It’s all right. I should’ve asked you earlier. Is it Wednesday? I can never remember which days you—”</p>
<p>The University. Sloan makes the connection and almost shakes her head, classes had ended, finals were starting, but Mac wouldn’t know that, wouldn’t remember even if she had mentioned it. “Sorry. I’m already running late. I—”</p>
<p>“Go.” Mac cuts in with an apologetic smile saving her from having to come up with an actual lie.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>She doesn’t go, or rather she doesn’t go where she’s supposed to go, wherever that should be, because she wanders aimless and agitated until she finally slows, stops when she recognizes the neighborhood, backtracks and spots Don’s stoop, takes a seat.</p>
<p>She can’t have been sitting there long, that feels impossible, but he’s concerned, clearly concerned that she’s sitting there when he shows up, offering her a hand to tug her to her feet, forgoing his usual comment about the unseasonable weather. It’s warm for this time of year but still cold, cold enough that that’s what he’s worried about.</p>
<p>There’s a warm shower waiting, she knows that as they make their way upstairs but he doesn’t say much else. He doesn’t ask her where she’d gone after she’d left work or when. He doesn’t ask her to say anything, let alone demand it, so she doesn’t. She doesn’t ask him what he’s thinking or what he’s expecting, she just follows him into the bathroom and watches him turn on the water, watches the steam rise up off the tiles.</p>
<p>The water feels hot, too hot, although she knows it can’t be. She’s showered here enough to know that he’s turned the temperature down quite a bit, it’s lukewarm at best, but she’s frozen through she realizes. She’d been sitting outside for longer than she’d thought.</p>
<p>She hears him come in, the door sticking a bit as it opens, to drop off something, clothes or a towel, and she pokes her head out as he leaves before stepping out of the shower to wrap herself in a towel.</p>
<p>She should’ve stayed there longer, under the warm water, but it’s not doing what she needs it to do, quieting the thoughts that insist on bubbling up, so she leaves the confines of the bathroom still damp, wearing his t-shirt and boxers, the sweatpants, the sweatshirt lying in a heap on the shelf beside the door. </p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“I plugged your phone in. It’s still off.” Don gestures toward the bookshelf in the corner where, she assumes, he’s stashed her phone. “Mac, tried to call you earlier, between the shows. She felt really bad. She didn’t know about Charlie. Reese. I told her you’d be all right.”</p>
<p>He smiles at her then and pauses, waits for some sort of contradiction to what he’s just said, waits for the outpouring of fear she’d been so certain was coming, but it isn’t there. She’s still uncomfortable, jumpy, wanting a distraction, wanting him closer than he is, because that’s why she’d shown up here in the first place, she’d realized that in the shower, but she isn’t panicking, not any more than she had been.</p>
<p>“I told her— I,” she stops to try and decide what to say. She had lied, technically, but she knows he won’t see it that way. She’s not entirely sure she’d see it that way if she hadn’t been so upset at the time, if she hadn’t wanted so badly just to say no and leave it at that, but it’s an old habit, a careful one, and so she’s not sure if she should mention that or not.</p>
<p>“Class? She said she walked right into that excuse.” He’s still smiling. “She said you looked confused. She couldn’t figure out why, that’s why she asked me what you were up to.” Softer. “You OK?”</p>
<p>She nods and realizes she’s been shifting closer, shuffling forward, toward him, hoping— she feels his arms around her and sighs.</p>
<p>“Will made me swear I wouldn’t forget to remind you that he’s promised to murder anyone who tries to push you into anything you’re not comfortable with. Mac’s clearly on board. I’m less enthusiastic about the idea. Murder’s kind of messy.”</p>
<p>“Messy.” She echoes with a smile, finally allowing herself to pull him closer. “You can’t do that. You wouldn’t make it in jail.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” he scoffs at the idea. “And Will would?”</p>
<p>“They’d send him to one of those cushy celebrity jails.”</p>
<p>“I don’t think that’s a thing.”</p>
<p>“Martha Stewart.” She insists and she feels him shift, tense and relax in a way she knows means he’s trying to take her seriously, trying not to laugh.</p>
<p>“I’ll give you that.” He finally decides and she nods, still holding on to him, still not wanting to let go, relieved the longer they stand here that he’s not asking her to.</p>
<p>“You want to talk about it?”</p>
<p>The offer comes softly, ruffling her hair. She considers it, she does, but she isn’t sure what to say. He’d made a better argument than she could have earlier, and while she’s not entirely sure she understands it even after Neal’s explainer she wouldn’t mind leaving it at that.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to do Charlie’s—” She’s not sure what to call it, his project, his trial run. She considers fumbling for something else to say but she knows she doesn’t have to, doesn’t need to.</p>
<p>“You won’t.”</p>
<p>The promise is sweet, warm in a way that surprises her. </p>
<p>“No more of that bullshit. Yeah?” He asks, reassuring and she nods.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You read the report?” Will asks when she slides through the half open door and she shrugs. She had, most of it anyway. Don had had the time to read the entire thing but she’d been too busy shooting emails back and forth with the TA who was supposed to be booking rooms for her classes next semester. She’d asked for one of the classrooms and been given an auditorium, a seminar room, and finally a conference room, none of which she’d asked for and none of which she wanted, but she knew how it was, being that far down in the pecking order, being ignored. It’d been a couple of years since she’d had to deal with any of that. It was a deliberate slight, one she hadn’t expected to be thinking this much about as she wanders over to Will’s desk to see what he’s working on.</p>
<p>It’s his usual workflow, just a mess of notes right now, phrases he wants to make a point of using, the draft more nebulous than it normally would be at this point in the day.</p>
<p>“You’d do a better job.” He says it casually, offhandedly, but he’s looking right at her. “You and Don know more about this than either Mac or I do.”</p>
<p>Because they’d both had time to read the report, that was it. That’s all, she wants to tell him, but she’s stuck halfway between explaining the last point on his list and telling him off because, “if Mac wants—”</p>
<p>“I wasn’t aware Mac was here. She’s crafty, but the last time I checked she’s not particularly stealthy.” He cuts her off calmly making a show of looking around his office. “If anyone was asking, and they’re not, it’d be me, not Mac. You’re good at this. I thought you’d like to know. That’s all.”</p>
<p>That’s all, like a compliment was a compliment and not a suggestion, not a wish.</p>
<p>She frowns at him a little stung by how blunt he was being. He was normally more careful with his nonapologies but he’s in some sort of mood today, it hadn’t taken her long to figure that out. He’s irritated by the segment. He’s normally happy to go on the air with whatever they have whether he’s written it or not, whether it’s more reductive than he thinks it should be because of time constraints either during the show or before, but today he’s annoyed with what he has. Annoyed he isn’t done, that they’re not done, that he’s not home with Mac, packing a bag for wherever they’re planning on spending the better part of the next week.</p>
<p>He wanted to be home, but he wanted her there too. His offer for dinner hadn’t seemed like much until she’d realized that he sounded unusually pleased by the idea. He was impatient and it was making him irritable but the thought of dinner with the three of them had cheered him up and so she hadn’t made her usual complaint about the hour. She knew he knew she wouldn’t be able to stay long.</p>
<p>She was used to the late nights now, but those hours belonged to Don, not that she would ever say as much. Being with Don felt safe in a way she hadn’t expected, but letting people know, letting anyone know felt like tempting fate, foolish. She liked the quiet secrecy of it all, the softly faded hours, the ones that so often felt like hazy half awake dreams. She needed them but Will needed this and so she’d agreed to dinner just to see him smile.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Mac, it turns out, had been the one to instigate dinner, had been the one to start insisting on it weeks ago.</p>
<p>“I thought he was never going to ask you.” Mac smiles at her over the rim of her glass, ice clinking and then shakes her head. “He’s still cranky we’re not renewing our vows in the Carribean over the holidays.”</p>
<p>“I can hear you.” Will warns from the kitchen but there’s the laughter in his voice that’s been missing all day.</p>
<p>“I thought I was going to have to spend all night listening to him mope around, but look at that face.” Mac turns in her chair to grin at him as he returns to the table. “Turns out the idiot just needed someone to order him sashimi.”</p>
<p>That wasn’t true. They all knew that, but Will was fascinated by how easily the foreign words still slipped from her mouth, smooth and lilting years after she’d learned them trying to forget the sound of her mother’s voice, harsh with sharp tones.</p>
<p>He insisted they got better service when she ordered but she was pretty sure that had more to do with the generous tips he insisted on giving. Even so she indulged him. It was a little bit of practice, something that kept the words from fading the way that German had. She hasn’t used it much since grad school, the environmental slogans the snappy catch phrases that had once rolled freely through her head come slowly to her now, tied up as much with Japanese as with anything else</p>
<p>It takes a bit more effort than it used to but she doesn’t mind and she knows Mac appreciates it too. She’s delighted by his teasing, the way he insisted on stabbing everything to death with a fork while she neatly folded sushi into her mouth, laughing when Sloan can’t help but shake her head.</p>
<p>They’d had tea cake for dessert because matcha was too much to ask him to say when he preferred the way <em>keeki</em> rolled off her tongue so easily right after it.</p>
<p>“It’s good.” He says as the last of the cake disappears into his mouth and she has to stop herself from frowning at him.</p>
<p>“Wagashi’s better.”</p>
<p>“Is not.” He says, even knowing of her fondness for the dessert. “Nothing’s better than this.”</p>
<p>He swallows and then grins at her as she shakes her head, challenging, “nothing?”</p>
<p>“Mmm,” he hums and then grins, “there is one thing.”</p>
<p>“One?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but you have to promise not too,” he gestures vaguely and then stands, moving back toward the bedroom so that she’s forced to follow him to hear the rest of what he’s saying.</p>
<p>“I got you something. Mac and I did.” He turns back toward her, leaning into the low table before the window, the lights outside sparkling. “We wanted to get you something nice.”</p>
<p>Nice. It’s the way he emphasizes the word that raises her eyebrows and lifts her shoulders slightly, protectively.</p>
<p>“I saw you eyeballing Mac’s and I thought,” he shrugs at that and turns, picks up a wrapped box, the silver paper stiff and awkward in her hands as she takes it from him.</p>
<p>Holding the wrapped box she knows what it is. It’s been almost a year since she and Mac had gone through the catalog, poured over the glossy photos, but she knows instinctively that it’s a watch, not any of the ones she remembers seeing, but it’s beautiful, deep black with a silver so bright it almost looks white.</p>
<p>“You can try putting the band through a shredder.” Will’s leaning back watching her. “I have it on good authority you’ll break the shredder first.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>He’d had it engraved. She hadn’t realized until she’d gotten home and taken the watch out of the box, turning it over in her hands in wonder. It’s just her name, the one she’d picked, slowly banishing Li Na Monroe: Sloan, the town she’d spent one glorious family-free summer as a child, a nickname at first and then later, so much later, Sabbith after a high school teacher, a favorite of hers, the paperwork filed on her eighteenth birthday. It’s her name right there where it should be, her first name in Mac’s neater script, her last a scrawling tribute to Will’s quiet impatience.</p>
<p>She couldn’t bear the thought of returning the watch, of losing it, but he’d made sure she couldn’t. The inscription and the band, some sort of high-tech nylon, matte and slightly ridged, looks as indestructible as he’d claimed and, she realizes watching the glass of the watchface glimmer in the light, enough like a smooth metal band that she’d never have an excuse to take it off, not even if he managed to talk her into another on-air segment.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>She’d been planning on staying at her place. She had always stayed at her place but one of her roommates had been left behind this year and had organized a ragtag group of stragglers to throw an extended holiday party, four days of good cheer. Good cheer that had been enough to drive Sloan out long before the drinking had started, because for the first time she was alone and she didn’t want to be.</p>
<p>She knew he’d be out of town. He’d caught the train up to Connecticut on Saturday, groaning about having to leave her and his bed and just about everything else even though she knew he was looking forward to the time with his family.</p>
<p>He knew she’d wouldn’t be going anywhere, and he hadn’t wanted to make that obvious, hadn’t wanted to make her feel like she was missing out even though she knew she was and not just because he hadn’t asked her to go with him.</p>
<p>She would have told him no. She would have had to. She knew she was missing something, but not what exactly. She’d made a point of never finding out because that would make it so much worse. She’d learned early on not to tempt herself like that, but there are still some temptations she can’t quite resist, the aching press on an old tired bruise, childhood memories wrapped up in the taste and smell of strange food. Food born from the desperation that came on the days when her dad was too drunk or in too much trouble with the law to work.</p>
<p>Her mother had shunned white rice. Poor people food she had called it like they weren’t poor, like anything else was better than that. Sometimes, rarely, it was. Stolen ketchup packets, cups of creamer and packets of sugar stashed for a rainy day, watered down and, if they were lucky and sometimes they were, there would be crackers, two each, the plastic crinkling as they tore into it.</p>
<p>It’s that memory, that fleeting feeling of excitement, the quick tears at the packaging, that tugs at her as she sits in his apartment wishing she’d thought of going out for food earlier, because it’s Christmas now, Tuesday. She’d made it through the weekend, but she knows better than to wander into the closest Chinese restaurant or Asian grocer looking for something, anything, to eat, because those aren’t the kind of memories she should be dredging up right now.</p>
<p>There isn’t anything in the apartment though. She hadn’t asked to stay, she’s had a key since the night he’d found her sitting out on his stoop, so she doesn’t mind that he’d cleared out most of the fridge, and there was a bottle of ketchup, a bottle of shelf stable creamer in the cupboard next to the sink.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“Enjoying your soup?”</p>
<p>She shrugs, not quite sure what to say, that smile of his melting the worry she hadn’t realized she’d been holding onto, the one that told her to guard against the unsuspected comment, the unintentioned barb sharp under her skin.</p>
<p>“Keeping warm or were you actually craving soup?” He asks another question, wanting a reply and she smiles at his grin knowing now he was headed toward a specific quip or comment.</p>
<p>“I was cold.” She says although maybe she means empty, means hungry, means hungry perhaps for him she realizes as he steps closer, that almost imperceptible shifting of his, the way he’d learned to slowly draw her attention from her, from inside her head, settle himself into her field of vision.</p>
<p>“I could warm you up.” He offers blandly, but the smile’s still there under the surface, waiting.</p>
<p>She wanders what it is he wants, specifically. She has a vague sense, the way he shifts and smiles, the way his eyes have crinkled at the corners, already warm and wanting. He would tell her, spell it out in words whispered against her skin, telling as much as asking, because she’d never volunteered anything, never asked although she took, took and took and filled herself with him, blotting out everything else.</p>
<p>It delighted him, the way so much of her seemed to melt, dissolve under his attention, because that was it she thought, although he’s always said she was the intense one, the intent one.</p>
<p>She feels his hand on her wrist, two fingers, and looks down to where his sleeve blocks her vision and then up again, toward him and the way he’s tipped his chin toward her, let his smile settle into the tiny lines on his face so that she reaches up instinctively to smooth them away, so that the smile returns to tug at the corners of his mouth.</p>
<p>“On a scale of one to tomato how much am I going to regret kissing you?”</p>
<p>“You like tomatoes.” She frowns a little, leaning in closer to study the way his lips twitch. She knows he’s teasing, but the response is automatic, practical in the way that so many things still were for her at first, despite the way he so often carefully tugs her free from all that.</p>
<p>“I like you.” He’s closer somehow, his breath warm on her skin, hovering, and then his lips soft against hers waiting, waiting until she sighs and whimpers because it feels so impossible having him this close and not having him, not feeling the way he reaches to pull her closer, gently, slowly.</p>
<p>It’s lazy and slow, the kiss. Already she can feel herself slip sliding, feel everything else begin to fall away, but she’s still clinging to her worry, to the big things. She could let it all go, the little things would fizzle out, and anything else, anything that came back to her he would help her deal with later, if she wanted, but it would be later, it would have to be. She’d have to let go, but she can’t ,not quite, not until she feels his teeth scrape her earlobe, not harsh but sharp enough that it narrows her focus, leaves the feeling and not much else ricocheting inside her head.</p>
<p>“I’m going to fuck you on the couch.” He whispers there against her ear and she shivers, wonders briefly at the thrill that slides down her spine, because they hadn’t. They’d made out once, ignoring the game on TV, the loss already so spectacular neither of them needed to watch, but everything else: there had been his bed, and once, desperately against the bathroom wall, but never the couch.</p>
<p>The couch was where she slept, slipping out of his bed after waking, after rousing herself from a stupor. She’d stay sometimes, when she needed the feeling of someone close, when that felt safer than being alone, but the couch was hers. He’d never argued with that.</p>
<p>“My couch.” She breathes out, checking, waiting to see.</p>
<p>“Yes.” She feels him smile at the thought, feels the puffed exhale of his chuckle lower on her neck. “Your couch.”</p>
<p>“Mine.” She says and he agrees again, hands beginning to wander, the sudden hot frisson of skin on skin as he brushes aside the t-shirt she’d borrowed.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>His cousin had decided to pick a fight, not with him, and maybe that was the problem, because it’d gotten ugly, ugly enough that he’d decided not to leave and find someplace else to stay for the night, but had hopped on a train back to New York.</p>
<p>He doesn’t go into the details, that wasn’t the problem with the fight anyway, and sighs instead against the slope of her collarbone, his head tucked against her chest, the two of them curled around each other still on the couch.</p>
<p>“And that’s pretty much my fucked up day.”</p>
<p>“The rest of the weekend was good though.” She reminds him combing her fingers through his hair, content.</p>
<p>“Mmm.” He agrees with a short sound and then hums again when she pauses to run a finger up the back of his neck, slow and gentle. “And you’ve been here eating through the stale remnants of my pantry.”</p>
<p>“Just today. I went to the Winter Village yesterday.”</p>
<p>He reaches up to tap her on the shoulder and she smiles, waiting. “The one weekday you’re not a hundred feet away and you went all the way over there?”</p>
<p>“It’s not that far.”</p>
<p>“It’s farther than—”</p>
<p>“But the sandwiches.”</p>
<p>“Oh that’s right.” He squirms and then settles down again with a disgruntled ooph. “Too comfy. I’ll get your dinner later. Peanut butter sandwich. From my mom.” He explains before she can get her hopes up. “She insists on feeding everybody.”</p>
<p>“I like that about her.”</p>
<p>It’s an odd thought. They’ve never met and she knows almost nothing else about his mom, but she likes that she’d been willing to send along food for a stranger because her son cared enough to ask.</p>
<p>“She’d like you. Not as much as I like you.” He burrows closer. “I like you very very much.”</p>
<p>“You like that you can come home and warm up with some athletic—” She stops when he snorts.</p>
<p>“You say that like I only slept with you so I could parade you around on TV.”</p>
<p>“No, that came first.” She shakes her head smiling when he crinkles his nose, irritated by an errant strand of her hair. “You like to have sex when I’m sad.”</p>
<p>He considers that for a moment, face turned up toward hers, patient. “What are you sad about tonight?”</p>
<p>Nothing, she almost says, but the question isn't as uncomfortable as she would’ve expected. “The segment. The one Will.” She sighs, frustrated, still, with the way she can’t quite seem to get it out of her head.</p>
<p>“Write it down.” He turns to press his face back against her skin, smiling. “You don’t have to do anything with it.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>She’d known when she’d decided to write it out, ten minutes of frantic scribbling had been all she’d needed, that doing nothing wasn’t an option. It was a perfect draft. The perfect draft for her. It wouldn’t work for Will. She could tweak it, send it to him, but the more she looks at it, pours over it, the more she’s convinced that would be a huge mistake.</p>
<p>When they get back, talk to Mac, Don suggests when he finds her sprawled on the couch reading through it again. It’s easy enough to agree to that, to agree to run through it with him by the end of the day, but by Thursday she’s beginning to have doubts, and by Friday she’s stopped answering when he asks her to go over it again, but it’s Sunday when Mac sends her yet another photo of the sun setting on the water that it hits her, how impossible it is to agree to what she’s thinking.</p>
<p>It’s easy enough to find the printed copies, the notes and the printouts of that first draft, the one she’s been sticking to, but she has a harder time with the electronic ones. The copies on his harddrive are easy enough to delete and it doesn’t take her long to comb through her inbox, but she can’t get into his email. At some point he’d been logged out and right now she can’t begin to imagine what his password is.</p>
<p>“Hey.” Quiet, asking, as her grip tightens on the laptop, her eyes still fixed on the screen, on the error message she’s been staring at. “Can I help?”</p>
<p>His fingers light on the back of her hand, rubbing, but she can’t let go.</p>
<p>“I can log you into my email.” He offers moving closer, sitting carefully beside her as she unwraps the fingers of one hand, letting go just enough to let him tilt the laptop toward himself.</p>
<p>He hits enter and relinquishes the computer, sits silently while the emails she’d sent him, his replies, get funneled into the trash and then deleted.</p>
<p>It’s supposed to make her feel better.</p>
<p>She doesn’t feel better. Had she missed something; she looks at him, silently asking and he leans toward her, presses the side of his face against hers and sighs.</p>
<p>She’s expecting some sort of patient reminder about practice, about how much he loved her omelettes even though he knows she’d probably destroyed a couple of pans back in school, but there isn’t any of that just another sigh.</p>
<p>“I can’t.” She says and then again, “I can’t,” like that might explain the way she wants to: why she can’t, because she can’t, can’t possibly.</p>
<p>“Physical impossibility.” He murmurs and she nods, cheeks suddenly damp.</p>
<p>“I can’t.”</p>
<p>“OK.” He says softly, at a whisper, his hand brought up to gently brush against her other check. “It’s OK. I know wanting nice things is terrifying.”</p>
<p>“No.” She’s confused, unsure. “What?”</p>
<p>“You haven’t taken that watch off since you put it on last Friday.”</p>
<p>“What does that have to do with anything?” She’s sniffling, trying to catch up, confused.</p>
<p>“No one’s going to take it away from you. It has your name on it, and so do all those emails you just deleted.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to.” She insists because she’s still confused even if she can see that that’s what he’s getting at.</p>
<p>“I think eighty percent of you agrees with that.” She feels him smile. “I’m not so sure about the rest.”</p>
<p>It’s not a compelling argument, not compelling enough, but the options do feel more like options, less like someone else’s choice, because ‘only if you want to’ and ‘I think you might’ are as much a promise as anything else he’s ever said to her and so she says ‘yes, maybe,’ says ‘yes, maybe,’ and means it in a way she hasn’t before.</p>
<p>She still isn’t sure on Wednesday even after Mac blocks out the time, even after she’s done her hair and makeup but then she sees Don slip into the studio and she pokes her head in to find him leaning against the side of a camera stand and she knows it’s going to be all right.</p>
<p>She knows she won’t be getting notes from him as long as he’s standing there, but they’ll be on the prompter, and there’s always Mac and, this early in the show, another block of ads, so she slides into the seat Will’s vacated and smiles at the camera imaging her reflection smiling back from the dark reflective lens.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>He’s exhausted. They all are, but Don’s the one who’s short an anchor with Elliot in Boston and there isn’t much he can do about the fact that Jo’s not happy about the hours, about the timing or the amount, or the scripts. She’d flat out refused to read the last one and had vamped for twenty minutes until Don had given up and given her something else. It’s the middle of the night so it doesn’t really matter, but they’re still on twenty four seven, the play-by-play trickling in at all hours, the world and the news never sleeping in a way she can’t remember happening before. Even Neal hasn’t been getting much sleep, combing through the internet, Twitter and Reddit, and the less typical spots. He’s pulling together conspiracy theories and conjecture, helping Will make a case against citizen journalism as much as he is feeding tips and connections to Don.</p>
<p>She hasn’t been as much a part of that as the others, but she has been sleeping in Don’s office. She’d moved the filing cabinet into the corner and pressed a couple of extra chairs together so she could sleep stretched out, elevated up off the floor.</p>
<p>She could’ve gone home, kept her normal schedule, or taken up Don’s but she liked the erratic naps, the few stolen moments she allows herself sprawled out on Elliot’s couch when Grant’s not around. They meant she could spend some time with Will, ease the tired haggard look he got off camera toward the end of the day and it meant she could keep Don company when he was about to start ripping his hair out in frustration because Jo or Matt or Alice weren’t quite living up to expectation.</p>
<p>“They’re facts. Just say the facts.” He groans to himself again, face in his hands, and then sighs. “It’s two hundred and ten, two hundred and, yes. Thank you.”</p>
<p>“Eventually you’re going to forget to mute yourself.” She reminds him even though she knows he’s not listening to her anymore than he’s listening to Matt fumble his way through another recap.</p>
<p>“This job is hell.” Again, not directed at her, but it’s melodramatic enough to make her smile.</p>
<p>“I could do it.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Don turns toward her with a faint smile, “thank god.”</p>
<p>“No,” she shakes her head when she realizes what he thinks she means, his headset already in his hands. “I meant for Matt. It’s the middle of the night. He needs some sleep.”</p>
<p>“No, there’s no way—”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“You need—”</p>
<p>“Prep time?” She heads him off, incredulous. “I’ve watched just as much of the coverage as you have, if not more. It’s the middle of the night on Thursday, there’s almost no chance of an update at,” she checks her watch, “two forty one. Neal and Jim are still working on, something,” she pauses to try and decide if she could take a guess at what it might be and then shakes her head, “but everyone else has gone home. It’s all on the prompter anyway. I wrote most of it with Mac before she left at midnight.”</p>
<p>“You haven’t—” He shrugs, trying to tell her something: that she hasn’t what? She’s done a couple of segments, whole blocks since that first one after New Year’s, even if she hasn’t done anything like this if he wanted to be specific, but she knew just as much as he did this time. The thought of actually doing it still terrified her, a sharp thrill in the bottom of her stomach, but she’s been thinking about it all week, wondering.</p>
<p>She’d be all right for a while, for, “an hour. He can catch a cat nap and grab some food. He’ll still be here if it all goes to hell.”</p>
<p>Don’s still hesitating, wanting to protect her, she thinks, but when she says she can have her makeup done in ten minutes he stops looking like he thinks he should argue and nods.</p>
<p>It all goes by in a blur, the fastest hour she’s spent all week, but she’s relieved to be done, to be able to stop prying the corners of her mouth up from the perpetual frown she’s been wearing for the last couple of days. The visceral horror of it all doesn’t bother her the way it bothers the others, but it does bother her. The numbers leave a bitter taste in her mouth so she’s glad when she can slump into a chair at the back of the control room and laugh, relieved, when Don turns to give her a thumbs up, hardly pausing long enough to smile in the middle of his rambling directions to Jo who had reappeared from somewhere.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“You know you really fucked yourself with the Boston coverage if you’re trying to get Charlie to stop considering you for newest anchor of the year.”</p>
<p>Reese leans back in his chair and looks at her, but she’d been expecting this. She’d been surprised it’d taken him the entire weekend to call and ask for lunch.</p>
<p>“I don’t think anyone, least of all Charlie is surprised I can read.” She tells him dryly hoping she isn’t leaning too heavily on Will’s sarcasm and Don’s easy indifference.</p>
<p>“It was better than half the shit—”</p>
<p>“It was two in the morning. That’s not a very high bar.”</p>
<p>“You’re acting like you don’t want this.”</p>
<p>“I don’t.” She sets her glass on the table and regards him as he watches her. He’s waiting for her to stop calling his bluff but she isn’t. “I don’t like people telling me what to do.”</p>
<p>“That’s exactly what you like.” He fires back easily and she has to stop herself from sighing. She liked precision, exact instructions and guidelines when someone asked her to do something, but that wasn’t the same as being told what to do, being ordered around.</p>
<p>When Don had said teleprompters were boring what he’d meant was she wasn’t a monkey. She’d do what she wanted in her own time, in her own way, even if it took her awhile to get there.</p>
<p>“You’re a known entity, a saleable product.” Reese switches tactics and she smiles at that, at the way he thinks they’re speaking the same language, because she understands him, understands the ins and the outs better than even Will did, but that didn’t mean she agreed with it. She could sell things to people, she’d made her living doing just that for longer than she’d done anything else, but she wasn’t about to blur that line. She’d been able to sell things to people not because she’d known what they wanted, but because she’d known what they feared; she’d been able to sell them comfort at best, a distraction at worst.</p>
<p>She didn’t want to do that anymore. She didn’t want to be that person. She was serious about this in the same way Mac and Will were, in the way that Don had started to be and she knew Reese wasn’t offering her that. Her background in policy was born more of training than of practice but she hardly thought that mattered when she'd clearly proven herself. Reese wouldn’t have called her to tell her his mother was impressed if she hadn’t.</p>
<p>“I don’t want four o’clock.”</p>
<p>“It’s a place to start.”</p>
<p>“Says the man who has no idea how to run a newsroom.”</p>
<p>“Ouch.” He grumbles. “I forget you used to play with the big boys.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want an EP who’s more interested in what the Kardashians are doing than in the rest of the world.” She says by way of apology and watches the way his chin tips down in a half nod of acknowledgement.</p>
<p>“Is there someone at Berkeley I should call to thank for this unwavering conviction or has Mac been as far up your ass as she’s been up mine?”</p>
<p>“You really think this started with Mac?”</p>
<p>“No.” He sighs like he’d been wishing that were true. “What was it, your second week on the job when you tore me apart over those BP ads?”</p>
<p>“Mhmm.” She picks at the remnants of her pasta before looking up. “You took it pretty well.”</p>
<p>“I was a shell-shocked. I’d never seen anyone spew that many facts in that short a time. It was impressive.”</p>
<p>“You recommended me to Neal.”</p>
<p>“You were more than qualified.”</p>
<p>“There are plenty of people who—”</p>
<p>“You were being wasted. Don was right you would be wasted at four, but I don’t want to lose you to CNN or NBC while we wait for something else to open up. We can’t afford to be losing talent right now. MacKenzie’s practically married to the network but Don’s more interested in following—”</p>
<p>“I’ll wait.” She cuts him off.</p>
<p>“It could be months, years.”</p>
<p>“I’m happy where I am.”</p>
<p>“For how long?” It’s as much a challenge as anything else he’s said but that doesn’t bother her. Reese was the kind of guy she was used to dealing with: the rich boy, the good boy. She knew what he wanted. She could give it to him, but she didn’t want to. She’d known he wouldn’t understand why, why she wouldn’t want more when he was so obviously offering it to her, but she was happy, as hard as that was for him to believe. “I can buy you lunch next week and beg some more.”</p>
<p>“I’m not trying to make you miserable.”</p>
<p>She knows he doesn’t agree with that either, but she doesn’t have anything else to say. She’s not taking the job, not now anyway and there’s nothing he can say that will change her mind. She’s willing to wait even though she knows none of them have any control over what that means, how long it might take. She’s happy with Don, and with Mac and Will, with Neal, and she’s not giving that up.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>She’s angry at him: for leaving her, for not being there, for not warning her, for not telling her. She’s angry mostly at him, but not because of him, but it was easier to be mad at him, to sit quietly in the cab biting her tongue, to pull away from his hand on her back as he ushers her gently into their room.</p>
<p>“That was shit.” He sighs after making sure the door has clicked safely shut behind him. “Whose idea was that anyway?”</p>
<p>He’s hoping for a laugh, a chuckle, anything that says she knows he’s being funny because it’d been his idea to invite her even if he had said Will was right about the entire thing being bullshit. He went every year because Charlie asked and because it meant a free flight to DC and a day off to wander around instead of attending panels and meetups like most of the people they’d spent the night bumping up against.</p>
<p>“Will keeps threatening to impose an embargo.”</p>
<p>She doesn’t say anything to that either and she knows he must be looking at her, watching her but she’s staring at the curtains, out into the sliver of inky black sky she can see from where she’s standing.</p>
<p>“Everything OK?”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>“You sure?” He doesn’t sound convinced even if he does sound like he already knows the answer. She is sure, sure that everything isn’t OK. Nothing is OK right now, but she’s not saying that. She’s not saying anything.</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>He sighs, waits a minute weighing his options. She knows he’s trying, knows none of this is his fault, but she so badly wants it to be.</p>
<p>“You want to get out of that dress?”</p>
<p>Nothing.</p>
<p>“Sloan?”</p>
<p>Still nothing.</p>
<p>“Hey.” Closer now, softer, right behind her</p>
<p>“I’m trying to be very quiet.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” She hears him breathe out. “I know where the panic button is,” he breathes out again. “I wasn’t sure there were other buttons, but someone’s definitely been pressing them.”</p>
<p>“Not one person.” She says and then stops, tries to breathe out the way he does, but the air sticks halfway up her throat and she swallows hard, scrubs her palm against the side of her leg.</p>
<p>“A room full of journalists and all they wanted to know,” Her thumb catches in a seam in her dress and she traces the ridge, keeps the words pressed tight in her chest.</p>
<p>“He’s going to be OK.”</p>
<p>“You don’t know that.” She is angry at him for that, for saying that, for the way he kept saying that.</p>
<p>“As far as I can possibly know, he’s OK. He’s going to be OK.”</p>
<p>“There’s no way you— there’s no.” She stops herself, moving away from him. “You can’t promise.”</p>
<p>“No, not a promise.” He agrees softly. “I can’t control other people, but he’s all right, right now. I can promise you that. That’s the best I can do.”</p>
<p>“That’s bullshit.” She’s five seconds away from crying and angry about that too. “He didn’t do anything. You said—” Although that hadn’t been what he’d said, not exactly, although he hadn’t said much, even as he’d insisted he couldn’t. She didn’t want him to protect her, didn’t need him to, but he was, insistently, doggedly, in a way that right now made her furious.</p>
<p>“Don’t touch me.” She snaps when he shifts a little closer and he holds up his hands, keeps them carefully in the space between them.</p>
<p>“I know you’re worried and I’m sorry. I should have realized people would be curious.”</p>
<p>Curious wasn’t the label she would put on it, but she can feel her anger ebbing. He’s being sympathetic, understanding, and he genuinely looks upset that he hadn’t thought to warn her.</p>
<p>“Tonight’s shot to shit but I promise you we’ll have fun tomorrow.”</p>
<p>“I don’t—” she frowns at him frustrated because she doesn’t care. Tonight had been shit when she’d so badly wanted it not to be. She hadn’t expected much, hadn’t expected it to go particularly well but she had wanted the distraction, had expected it and the fact that even that hadn’t worked out. “This is bullshit.”</p>
<p>“Mac’s angry too.” He seems a little surprised by that, like maybe he hadn’t known, although she doesn’t know why it’s just occurred to him now. “They’ll get bored. It’ll go away.”</p>
<p>It’s the same thing she’s been hearing all week, mostly from Will, but the line doesn’t sound any better coming from Don’s mouth.</p>
<p>“What if it doesn’t?”</p>
<p>“Then we deal with it then.”</p>
<p>“Neal’s already—”</p>
<p>“I know,” he soothes, stepping closer, reaching gently to touch the side of her face. “You want out of that dress?”</p>
<p>“I don’t—” she starts wanting to tell him she doesn’t want to be placated, but she does want this, the gentle  overly caring side of him even if the reassurance chafes in its half truth.</p>
<p>“It’s not—” she says and he sighs for her, reaching to tug at the zipper under her arm, standing close enough to let her lay her forehead against his shoulder if she wanted to, but she won’t let herself. She’s too afraid of what all this means, missing Neal and wanting Don, trusting Will, what it means not for her, she’d long ago decided on reckless, but for them, for the ways she’s made them different.</p>
<p>She hadn’t thought about it much until Neal had left, until she’d realized he’d left as much as for Will as for himself, that Will was involved because he couldn’t not be, not when he cared. She didn’t want anything to happen to them, any of them, because of her, even if logically she knows she’s far past having a say in that.</p>
<p>“It’s going to be OK.” Even at a whisper he sounds so sure of that. “Sloan,” he breathes out again but she shakes her head. She doesn’t want to hear him promise, not that, not anything, not when she won’t believe it, not when she needs him to. Tonight nothing is OK and they’re both going to have to live with that.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“If I needed you, could you do a show next week?” Mac shifts, curling her toes around the edge of a couch cushion as Sloan glances over. She’s only been back in New York for a couple of hours, curled up in the corner of Mac’s couch for far less than that but they’re already talking about work, letting the rest of the day, the lazy breakfast in bed with Don, the late brunch, slip through time into the past.</p>
<p>“Classes are out. Reese is pestering me for lunch again but other than that my schedule’s free.”</p>
<p>“I’m not talking about a couple of segments. I mean the whole show.”</p>
<p>“Reese talked you into that?” Sloan grins, glancing over again but Mac isn’t smiling. “Did something happen? Mac?” She pries when she doesn’t get an immediate response, a teasing smile.</p>
<p>“There’s a nonzero chance that Will’s— he might not be around for a couple of days. It’s nothing to worry about.”</p>
<p>“You sound worried.”</p>
<p>“I’m—” Mac sighs and frowns at her. “Will’s going to be back and forth to DC dealing with some legal stuff.”</p>
<p>“Because of Neal?” The mention of Neal twists a knot in her stomach. She still doesn’t know what happened, not any of the details, because no one was saying anything, no one would tell her anything even when she asked.</p>
<p>“Yes and no,” Mac shakes her head at herself and sighs. “He’s an idiot.”</p>
<p>“That doesn’t sound—”</p>
<p>“It’ll be fine. I— just in case. I’d rather have you than Elliot. We’re probably better off that way, having to deal with Pruitt.”</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>There’s a nonzero chance Will’s going to jail was what Mac had failed to say, news that had left her spinning, reeling. On top of that Pruitt was an ass, at least that was how Mac had chosen to describe their present situation. Sloan had other words she preferred to throw at Don when he came home to find her rearranging his belongings once again.</p>
<p>It wasn’t easy doing the show every night. It was exhausting and terrifying in a way she hadn’t expected. Don was still there, always there, but she felt vulnerable without Will around to bail her out if she needed him too, without Neal there to laugh at her tiny blunders. It didn’t feel right being on air without them but Mac was right, she couldn’t have asked Don to give up Elliot and she couldn’t have dropped the show in Elliot’s lap without warning. He and Don were a good match for ten o’clock which left her scrambling around at eight, or it had because she’s pretty sure that’s over now.</p>
<p>At least Reese wasn’t around to be disappointed that he’d gotten his wish and let her ruin it. He’d called her to congratulate her when the first week had wrapped up and it’d become apparent that she could be doing this for a while, when things had gone from her doing a favor to her doing a job.</p>
<p>He’d been so pleased and proud in a way she’d only expected only Don to be, but now that was done and even if he wasn’t disappointed, she was, in a way that surprised her, another devastation to sit under the roiling panic that still sat cloying in her chest even as she slept, waking occasionally, fitfully throughout the night.</p>
<p>Don’s there with her at first, she knows that because she’d clung to him desperately trying to remember how to breathe while she’d cried big wordless sobs that had left her trembling long after they had passed. Later he’d been farther away, she’d registered that and little else, the sound of his voice low and hushed and then later when she woke again, closer, the rumble of laughter, the sound of Mac’s hushed voice confusing her as she struggled back toward sleep.</p>
<p>She wakes again, suddenly this time, with an alertness that startles her the same way the thudding in her chest does. She’d been dreaming again, the same fretful, disorientating dream that had been disturbing her sleep all night. She can’t remember much, the memory of it runs like water through her fingers, but the shame of it and the echoing rattle of Pruitt’s voice are enough to tell her what it must have been.</p>
<p>“You’re all right.”</p>
<p>It takes her a moment, as disoriented and panicked as she is, not to place the voice, but to place the incongruity of it because it’s Will, warm and solid, the words rumbling sleepily around them.</p>
<p>“Will?” Her voice is thick and hazy, sticking in her throat.</p>
<p>“Mmm.” He murmurs back, brushing her hair out of her face, palm flat against the side of her head and she knows that it’s him, really him. She’s not imagining things because it can’t be Don, he was always more careful, he would’ve tucked her hair behind her ear. Will was impatient, wanting to see her, wanting to carefully wrap her up in a hug with a contented sigh.</p>
<p>“I hope you don’t mind me waking you up. That was a shitty dream you were having.”</p>
<p>“What?” She blinks a couple of times even though it’s really too dark to see much of anything. Someone had left a light on across the room, but it’s behind them, Will’s blocking most of the light leaning into the corner of the couch, watching her. “You’re here?”</p>
<p>“Mhmm.”</p>
<p>“No one told me, no one—” she swallows and frowns at him trying to give herself a moment to catch up.</p>
<p>“Mac was going to tell you after the show, when we were sure. That didn’t exactly work out.”</p>
<p>He says it so blandly, so casually that there’s no corresponding panic pinching tight in her chest. She’d been all right with Charlie, with the yelling in general, she’d expected that, she and Mac had talked about it. They had known, strictly speaking, that they were breaking the rules but it had seemed more than worth it. They were doing the right thing, they would deal with the consequences, the two of them together, both of them were equally responsible, although Mac had gently insisted that she bear the brunt of the responsibility. It was safer that way, she knew that, but she hadn’t felt like she’d needed to be safe, not until Pruitt had started yelling and everything had started slipping through her fingers.</p>
<p>There had been something about his anger, something uncontrolled, sharply edged, that had made her blood turn cold and the air in her lungs freeze. Don had been there, solidly behind her, warm, carefully quiet, but firm when he’d started insisting, although by that point she hadn’t been sure about what, hadn’t been sure either what Mac had said.</p>
<p>She can’t remember any of that but she remembers the way she had felt herself trembling, the almost imperceptible shaking that had made her feel like she was rattling apart even as she had steadily slid her transit card through the reader and pressed her hand against the turnstyle.</p>
<p>Don had sat up with her, held her in the silence of his apartment but at some point Will had shown up, had returned and kept her close. </p>
<p>Pruitt had scared the shit out of her was probably what Don had said, Mac would’ve been too angry to manage even that much. She’d be angry about Charlie and Pruitt, about the yelling and whatever they had or hadn’t said about Sloan and the rest of the staff. Mac wouldn’t care much what they’d said about her personally but she’d turned out to be rather protective in Will’s stead, although she normally kept those particular feelings to herself.</p>
<p>Her fury though wouldn’t be quiet, not now when it didn’t have to be and Sloan wonders about that for a moment before asking, “where’s Mac?”</p>
<p>“Asleep. I assume.” Will muses, now turning his attention to the hair he’s failing to tuck behind her ear. “That’s just about the only thing that would shut her up, unless Don’s gotten creative.”</p>
<p>“Don?” She turns her head, feels her hair brush the side of her face, but she doesn’t care about ruining Will’s half constructed comfort.</p>
<p>“He’s probably passed out on the end of the bed. Mac insisted he join her so he didn’t end up sleeping on the floor somewhere.”</p>
<p>“Why?” She says and sighs because things are starting to make sense now. She would’ve fallen asleep in one corner of the couch with Don. Will would’ve taken the other. Somehow, she really can’t imagine how, he’d ended up over here, or maybe the dream had done that, her need to be wrapped up someplace safe to keep it from crawling too deeply into her head.</p>
<p>“He said not to worry about you.”</p>
<p>She can tell he’s frowning even without being able to see his face. It’s the almost sigh sitting in his chest that gives it away, the way his fingers press lightly into her shoulders, unconsciously drawing her closer again.</p>
<p>“Are you?” She asks because she isn’t sure if she should tell him not to be, if she has the right to after the way she’d fallen apart.</p>
<p>“No.” He pulls her closer, intentionally this time, lets her settle in, his hand warm on her arm, the other back in her hair. “Pruitt and I are going to have a little chat.”</p>
<p>“You can’t—” The words spill out quickly but she isn’t panicked like she half expects, she’s too exhausted for that.</p>
<p>“I went to school with guys like him.” He reminds her tugging almost playfully on a strand of her hair.</p>
<p>“Bullies.” He mutters under his breath and then continues more evenly. “They’re used to getting their own way but they’re not idiots, even if they aren’t as smart as they think they are. We’ll have a chat. No threats. I won’t even make suggestions. I’d invite Mac along but she’d take his head off before I could even say hello.”</p>
<p>“Is she OK?”</p>
<p>“She’s seen worse than him.” He assures her even though that isn’t an answer. “I’ve already made her promise not to strangle him the next time she sees him, and called Leona to suggest she suggest he take a couple of hours off in the morning at the very least.”</p>
<p>“Is Charlie—” she leans into him, suddenly not wanting to finish that question, relieved when he doesn’t answer. She isn’t worried about disappointing Charlie. She doesn’t know him that well. She hasn’t learned to fear disappointing him, but he did hold sway over her job, a lot more than he used to, and she cares about that.</p>
<p>“You did good tonight.” He responds instead, voice warm, humming through his chest. “I insisted on watching it before I did anything else, made Mac pretty sorry she’d brought it up before I’d even had a shower.”</p>
<p>“You smell like Will.” She says still confused enough, just groggy enough that the admission doesn’t feel awkward, or desperately raw. It’s just a confirmation of what he hadn’t yet said, that he’d showered before coming here, along with whatever else he’d done in his first few hours of freedom.</p>
<p>“I don’t know if I would’ve had the guts.”</p>
<p>“You would.” She lets him hug her as she mumbles a bit, aiming for something she hopes sounds honest and earnest enough. “Mac was there. And you have.” She remembers that; she’s seen so many of his broadcasts, watched so many from the bullpen and from the control room. Will wasn’t always the first to jump at new ideas, big ideas, but he had the conviction to stand behind them and the will not to let anyone shove him around. She wasn’t sure, anymore, if she could say the same.</p>
<p>“It was brave.” He insists softly, almost tenderly she would suppose if the thought of that didn’t make her throat close up. “You did an amazing job.”</p>
<p>“It was,” she tries to fit words into the blank that follows, but ‘I— I was’ echoes around in her head too loudly to make anything make sense. She’d been proud of the interview, almost as proud of herself, but that had all evaporated when she’d crumbled and she wonders how he can’t see that.</p>
<p>He’d never said, never explained, but she knew he knew what it felt like, the aching hole in your chest from being shoved around half your life, the way it was easier not to let people in, but he let people in. Maybe it had started with Mac, but he had let them all in. It’s the reason they were all here, now, like this, because of him and Neal and everyone else, and he didn’t seem to mind, didn’t seem to want to apologize for any of it, he certainly didn’t feel like he needed to and she wondered how.</p>
<p>“I shouldn’t have—”</p>
<p>“No.” It’s nothing more than a sigh but she knows that he means it, his finger bumping the bottom of her chin.</p>
<p>There’s an automatic shift in her shoulders, the one he’d so gently insisted on for so long. <em>Don’t make yourself small in front of me.</em> He’d never demanded it, but it was always the same: chin up and a pat on the shoulder.</p>
<p>“That a girl.”</p>
<p>She can hear the smile now, the one that says he’d meant what he’d said when he’d said he was proud.</p>
<p>He’d promised her, not long after her first night on his show, that he’d always be there with her, right there next to her and she knew that he meant to keep that promise now.</p>
<p>She’d always doubt, he’d told her that too, in a way that she’d first assumed was some sort of aphorism, but she can see now that he’d meant it, meant it in a way she couldn’t have suspected. He hadn’t seen clean through her then but he could now, here in the dark, her ear on his chest, listening to the steady thump of his heart.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“Seltzer, sparkling water, sparkling cider, fizzy grape something.” She watches the bottles appear, the sound of Will’s voice muffled a bit by the cabinet door. “What do you think?”</p>
<p>“Are we celebrating?”</p>
<p>She screws up her face and waits for him to glance over, but if he does it’s only to look at the door between them as he rustles around some more.</p>
<p>“What are we celebrating?” </p>
<p>She doesn’t like that she has to ask again, that she has to ask like this, because it wasn’t like him to ignore her, especially when she’d asked him a question.</p>
<p>“Mac’s promotion, Charlie’s retirement, take your pick.” He replies easily, finally shutting the cabinet door to regard her.</p>
<p>She doesn’t say anything. She isn’t sure what to say, not at first, but then she wants to ask him what he thought gave him the right. She knows that’s why he’d asked her over here before the others. She hadn’t thought anything of it when Don had mentioned that Will had suggested she lend a hand, but now she knows he hadn’t wanted her help, he’d wanted to talk to her about this, about whatever this was that’s rising a roiling panic in her chest, but before she can ask him about that, before she can say anything Mac’s surprised “my what?” registers, stuttering in her head.</p>
<p>“I told you he’d agree to it.”</p>
<p>“You told me you’d need help.”</p>
<p>“I got help, Leona—”</p>
<p>“Leona was it?” Mac sounds amused, and what do we— Sloan?”</p>
<p>Sloan can almost hear the mental backtracking as Mac realizes she isn’t joining in on, or at least enjoying the teasing.</p>
<p>“Hey.”</p>
<p>It’s a gentle prod but it still takes Sloan a moment to pull the words together.</p>
<p>“What about the show?”</p>
<p>“The show’s not going anywhere. Jim—” It’s meant to sound reassuring, but there it is, the dread she’s been feeling, right there on top of everything else.</p>
<p>“Jim?”</p>
<p>She swallows the name, feeling Mac’s hand on her arm. Too close registers somewhere in the back of her mind, but it’s Mac and they’ve grown closer, so much closer in the last couple of months that it feels all right to let her stay.</p>
<p>“No. I can’t.” She tries shaking her head, but she can’t stop thinking about her leaving. It was one thing to do the show without Will, to pull everything together just enough to manage that, but to have to sit in the studio, without Mac, in front of millions—</p>
<p>“You and Jim work well together.” That was true. They had, in the moments when Mac was busy, when she’d had to step out for a minute, but that wasn’t the same and they both knew it.</p>
<p>“I’ll be there.” Mac’s insistent, peering at her until the words start to sink in. “Every night, okay?” A question and a nod, one that needs a response, but everything’s too slow, everything’s a little too hazy.</p>
<p>“What about,” she feels her bottom lip sting, feels the space around her come back into focus a little bit, “Don?”</p>
<p>“Don?” She can hear Mac’s hair rustle as she shakes her head. “Don’s staying at ten o’clock.”</p>
<p>“Because of me.” She’s aware of how small her voice is, a gravely, half silent whisper, but the words sit like rocks in her stomach, bitter and aching.</p>
<p>“Mmm, no.” It’s Will that answers smoothly. “We can’t survive more than ten minutes in the same studio without Mac there. Most of that was before your time.” He brushes the dismissal aside. “He’s no more interested in moving to eight than I am in having him.”</p>
<p>That sounds plausible, there’s a part of her that knows that, but it doesn’t sound like the truth, it doesn’t sound anything like the truth because she knows what it is, knows who to blame and she hates it, hates everything about it because Don had been right, being reckless felt great until it didn’t and now she was going to have to fix things. The interview had been her fault, she’d been worried enough about everything going on, about Neal being gone, about Will stuck in jail alone, that she’d wanted to help. She’d wanted to remind them what they were fighting for, but she’d only made things worse: pushed Charlie away, forced Mac into a job Sloan knew she couldn’t really want.</p>
<p>She’s crying quietly, silent tears slipping down her face as she hears Don come in, hears the sound of him moving through the apartment, stopping to say something to Mac and then his voice, closer, obviously directed at Will. “I told you she wasn’t going to like it.” And then at her, softer. “Hey, come here.”</p>
<p>She doesn’t move, not at first. She isn’t stuck, just considering, wondering, trying to pull the words together, but there’s only a couple that she needs and she hopes he can understand.</p>
<p>“I’m breaking up with you.” She says it first with her face pressed into his chest, his arms around her, trying them out, before the questioning note in the back of his throat makes her pull back enough to repeat herself.</p>
<p>And again the sound like he can’t understand although she knows he must have heard her, and then, “look at me and say it again.” A gentle request even though he knows she can’t.</p>
<p>“I—” her eyes flick up toward his, but she falters before she manages to look past the corners of his softly frowning mouth.</p>
<p>“I’m, I’m,” she tries again sighing angrily in frustration but there’s no way for her to do what he’s asked even with his hand cupped under her chin.</p>
<p>“Why?” He requests instead when she feels anger prickle over her skin.</p>
<p>“My fault.” She pulls the words out of thin air without thought and then bursts into tears so that she’s standing there crying when Neal appears, decidedly less concerned looking than the others.</p>
<p>“What happened?”</p>
<p>“Don,” Mac starts, considering where to go from there but that doesn’t seem to matter to Neal.</p>
<p>“You can be mad at me for this later.” He assures her, stepping closer, looming for a second before he wraps her in a hug, tight and fierce in a way she never let anyone touch her but it’s Neal, soft and funny Neal who seems to have developed a protective streak along with the rest of them.</p>
<p>“Men do stupid stuff when they’re in love.” He assures her and then stops with an almost silent huff. “We’re not using that word yet are we?”</p>
<p>He doesn’t seem particularly upset by the idea which is why, Sloan assumes, Will chuckles, but there’s a sigh from Don at the sound of it and then a quiet yes.</p>
<p>“Well that’s,” she can feel Neal shake his head. “He’s an idiot. We can fix that.”</p>
<p>But fixing it was the problem, although she knew he had no way of knowing that, no way of knowing why she’s finding it impossible to stop crying. There was only one way to fix it, one way to stop them from being reckless protecting her, to stop herself from messing things up even more.</p>
<p>“We have to.” It’s a lament, achingly bitter, but it’s easier to tell him, easier to hope he might be the one to explain. She’d seen his relationships, the ones that came and went so fast she’d stopped keeping track years ago. She knew he could make sense of this even if none of the others could.</p>
<p>“Have to what?”</p>
<p>“Break,” she says and then swallows, “break up.”</p>
<p>“Why?” It’s gentle, so gentle she almost can’t answer, but she’d gotten herself, gotten them, into this and now she had to fix it.</p>
<p>“He needs— he has to— it’s my fault.” She knows he’s not going to buy it, none of them are, but it’s the closest she can come to explaining.</p>
<p>Don needed to take the promotion, he needed the cash, to pay off the mortgage and the other expenses Jerry was responsible for, but it wasn’t just the lawsuit. He deserved the job, had worked hard for something better than second best. It wasn’t that he show was bad, or that Elliot wasn’t any good, he was, but he wasn’t Will, <em>Right Now</em> wasn’t ACN’s flagship show and she knew he wasn’t going to head to CNN or MSNBC looking for something better, especially if she needed him to stay, if she was staying. But if she could convince him to let her go, if he would— maybe, “we can’t work together.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>She can’t answer that. She doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what he might believe. To suggest it was HR policy would be laughable considering that Don had been with Maggie at one point and that Mac and Will had been married far longer than she’d known either of them. That won’t work but there must be something.</p>
<p>She shakes her head.</p>
<p>“Have you asked him?” It’s Will, trying to be helpful again and for a moment she almost ignores him, but then she realizes she hadn’t. She hadn’t because it hadn’t occurred to her that she could, that he might have the answers that she didn’t like he so often had before. </p>
<p>She wanted to go back to that time, back before Pruitt, before Boston had been torn apart, before Will had been in trouble and Neal had had to leave. She wanted to go back to a time when she’d known what to ask and what it all meant, because she doesn’t know anymore, and she isn’t sure, not of anything but this.</p>
<p>“You have to take the job.” She doesn’t know why she thinks that’s going to work, a flat out plea, pulling away from Neal to stare at Don and the concerned look on his face.</p>
<p>“What job, Sloan?”</p>
<p>She shakes her head at her name, brushing off how tender it sounds. “Mac’s. Mac’s—”</p>
<p>“Sloan.” It’s Will this time, sounding patient. “Sloan, if Charlie’s retiring who’s in charge of staffing?”</p>
<p>It feels like a question out of left field, one that takes her a second to answer as she turns away from Don to stare at him. “Mac?”</p>
<p>“And if Mac hasn’t offered him the job.”</p>
<p>Will hardly has the words out before she’s turned to Mac, stung hot with a fury she doesn’t understand. “Why?”</p>
<p>“They would kill—”</p>
<p>“Oh god.” Don interrupts with enough dread to stop them all from saying anything else. “Please, don’t ask me to do that again. Will’s great but he’s—”</p>
<p>“Standing right here.”</p>
<p>“I’m the sole reason Mac didn’t end up in Afghanistan.”</p>
<p>“Iraq.”</p>
<p>“That’s not the only,” Mac butts in. “It was complicated.” She levies her assessment with a bemused grin. “But I stayed and I’m here and Don’s staying at ten.”</p>
<p>“No.” She knows she should stop insisting, she’s not getting anywhere, but there’s a part of her that’s panicking at the thought of things not working out the way they were supposed to. “He can’t. He has too— then he won’t have to find a roommate and we can—”</p>
<p>“Roommate?”</p>
<p>Sloan shakes her head dismissively, but Mac’s curious now and she knows there’s no way to stop the conversation from getting derailed without letting her see it through.</p>
<p>“It’s,” Don shakes his head but Mac only widens her eyes, waiting for him to continue.</p>
<p>“I told her I thought if I had someone to help pay the rent—”</p>
<p>“You what?” Mac sounds incredulous, grinning when Will shakes his head.</p>
<p>“You can’t— It’s Sloan.” Mac’s laughing like that’s supposed to mean something and even Will can’t quite hide his smile, but she’s not sure what it’s supposed to mean. “You can’t— I thought you gave up on being a romantic.”</p>
<p>“I thought it would be— never mind. Clearly I should have just asked, all right.” Don finishes frowning at Mac, but it’s clear that he knows that she’s teasing him and enjoying it too.</p>
<p>“Ask what?” She hadn’t intended to ask. She knows they would’ve gotten there eventually, but Neal’s about to dissolve into a torrent of silent laughter, she’s still close enough to feel him trembling, and she wants to be in on the joke.</p>
<p>“Oh,” Mac sobers up for a second and then grins, continuing before Don can answer. “He was trying to ask you to move in with him.”</p>
<p>“I was trying—” Don attempts to cut in.</p>
<p>“No.” Sloan feels her hair brush the side of her face with the quick shake she gives her head. “He said he needed a roommate. I already have roommates.” She emphasizes the last part, the plural, and sees Will shake his head a little, a request for her to reconsider her answer.</p>
<p>“He’d have to partition off the living room and there wouldn’t be much space to— we decided it wouldn’t be a good idea.”</p>
<p>“Based on the faulty assumption—” Neal seems to be trying to help her out but Mac cuts him off.</p>
<p>“Don wasn’t asking you about having a stranger move in.”</p>
<p>“He said—”</p>
<p>“He was asking you to move in with him.”</p>
<p>“No, that doesn’t—” she starts and then stops when she sees the look Will’s face, the way his smile reaches his eyes.</p>
<p>“I don’t make enough to pay half,” she says it softly, cutting herself off. She makes a decent living considering she’s being paid to do three jobs, but she’d checked Don’s math last November, she knows she can’t afford half of his eight hundred thousand dollar mortgage let alone the maintenance fees and everything else.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t expect— I’m the one with equity in the place, or I was.” Don’s smile is a little wry, but no less warm than it normally was. “What you’re paying now would be more than enough.”</p>
<p>“It’s not—” she wants to argue, but he’s still smiling.</p>
<p>“It’s more than enough to cover a table at HaSalon.”</p>
<p>She wants to scoff at that, but the memory chaffs, the disappointment at having to give up the reservation when he’d told her gently that he wouldn’t have that kind of cash until he’d gotten paid again, about a week too late to do any good. She’d told him upfront that she’d pay him back and she’d scraped together as much as she could, but it’d been a bad week that week, she hadn’t asked why, and so Matt had taken his girlfriend instead.</p>
<p>“You know I’m all right.” He sounds more concerned now so she nods. “I don’t need the job, but I could still be persuaded to clear out the closet in the—”</p>
<p>“Dude.” Neal groans and Sloan’s surprised to find she’s the one laughing this time, knowing he’s referring to the broom closet, the tiny wedge of space in the corner he’d never found a use for. He’d insisted that would be more than enough space for his future roommate, at the time she hadn’t understood, but now she could see what he’d meant, she’d already taken over a portion of his closet, and he’d long ago ceded several of his dresser drawers to her. She didn’t own much else, she’d never had the time or the money to accumulate much, the closet could very well be enough space if she wanted it. If she thought— </p>
<p>“The drawer next to the wall in the bathroom and,” she considers as he shrugs, “that one in the kitchen.”</p>
<p>She knows he knows which one, the one he was always throwing snacks into for her to scrounge up, stroop waffles and kit kats, packets of hot chocolate. The drawer was already hers.</p>
<p>“And the one below that.” He offers and she shrugs. She still didn’t cook much, and when she did the space they shared was more than adequate. ”Anything else?”</p>
<p>“Waffles.”</p>
<p>“Waffles,” he echoes shaking his head, “so, yes?”</p>
<p>“Mmm, so,” she says smiling a little shyly as Will cuts in over her, “yes,” with a “I’ll drink to that.” that gets a laugh from Neal and a shove from Mac who, Sloan’s surprised to see, looks a little teary.</p>
<p>“I told you.” Mac insists and Sloan isn’t sure about what, although Will’s still grinning so she figures it has more to do with him than with her. “Do you think I could—”</p>
<p>“No.” Will cuts Mac off before she can get started and Don laughs, shaking his head, moving loser, reaching for her so they can follow the others toward the kitchen and whatever celebratory goodies Will’s about to dig out because Mac’s brimming with happiness and, Sloan finds as Don wraps an arm around her shoulder, that she is too.</p>
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